There is a scene from the television show "The Office" that is both hilarious and painfully revealing. The bumbling boss, Michael Scott, has accumulated enormous debt he cannot possibly repay. When a coworker offhandedly suggests he simply declare bankruptcy, Michael takes the advice at face value. He walks out into the middle of the office and announces at the top of his lungs, "I declare bankrup...  Read More

There is a passage in Mark 9 that most people assume they understand before they have really sat with it. On the surface, it reads like a radical call to self-denial — cut off your hand, tear out your eye, throw a millstone around your neck. Harsh, vivid, arresting language. But if you stop there, you have missed the deeper current running beneath every verse.This passage is about Christians getti...  Read More

There is a question worth sitting with for a moment before reading any further. When Jesus tells His disciples in Mark 9:35 that whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all, what do you instinctively think He means?Most of us, if we are honest, land somewhere in the neighborhood of philanthropy. We think of giving generously, volunteering our time, meeting the needs of the poo...  Read More

There is a moment in Mark 9 that stops you cold if you read it carefully enough. A desperate father has carried his suffering son to Jesus, watching the boy convulse and foam and fall into fires and water, always on the edge of destruction. The disciples have already tried and failed to help. The scribes are arguing. The crowd is restless. And this father, exhausted and barely holding together, sa...  Read More

There is something about mountains that stops us in our tracks. Whether you are standing at the base looking up or perched at the summit looking down, mountains have a way of making human beings feel appropriately small. You have to lift your eyes to take them in. Something in that posture — head raised, gaze extended upward — prepares the heart to receive something larger than itself.It may be no...  Read More

There is a question that cuts through every distraction, every excuse, and every comfortable assumption we carry about our lives. It is not a question about career or family or finances. It is a question about eternity. And it was asked by Jesus of Nazareth on a dusty road heading north toward Caesarea Philippi roughly two thousand years ago. The question has never stopped being asked. It is being...  Read More