Today’s Walk in the Word

Be careful not to forget the Lord your God.   —Deuteronomy 8:11 Alzheimer’s! We all know someone who has it. We’ve seen its devastation. It has us on edge: when we have a memory lapse, it triggers a haunting feeling that we may be heading into the twilight zone of the dreaded “A.” Mindless forgetfulness […]

All things work together for the good of those who love God.      —Romans 8:28 Joseph got a bunch of bad breaks: sold into slavery by jealous brothers; sent to the slammer by the false accusation of a lying woman. Years later, hindsight revealed that God had crafted rewarding results from excruciating experiences. When […]

In God I trust; I will not be afraid.   —Psalm 56:11 “The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield’” (Gn 15:1). It’s a hostile world; fear is chronic. Not only to Abram, but also to Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, Mary, Paul, and […]

Forget not all his benefits.           —Psalm 103:2 Turn pouting into praise by focusing on what you have, instead of fixating on what you don’t have. Psalm 103 hands you twenty-two verses of what’s already in your bucket. Verse two says, “Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all […]

You should want praise from God and not from humans.      —Romans 2:29 Are you sensitive to what others think of you? Aren’t we all? Dr. Raj Raghunathan, a professor at the University of Texas, teaches a course about happiness. At the beginning of the semester, he asks his students to tell him what […]

Because you say so, I will let down the nets.       —Luke 5:5 Jesus, the carpenter, told Simon, the fisherman: “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch” (Lk 5:4). There were two things off base with this charge: 1) Nighttime was the right time to fish; it […]

Grace be with you.  —2 Timothy 4:22 I get misty-eyed reading 2 Timothy, Paul’s last letter. He was terribly lonely. “Everyone in the province of Asia has deserted me,” he wrote (1:15). “At my first defense, no one stood with me . . . all forsook me” (4:16). “Only Luke is with me” (4:11). He […]

To Timothy, my dear son. 2 Timothy 1:2 Today my scheduled daily Bible reading put me in the pages of 2 Timothy. When I visit here, it’s always with a sense of sadness, because it was Paul’s last letter. His writings have been transformative in my life; so when he signs off and lays aside […]

On his law he meditates day and night.                           —Psalm 1:2 I got a belly laugh out of a publicist’s defense of a politician whose knowledge of Scripture was dubious. “He knows his Bible,” he said. “He’s read it all the way through. […]

Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.                  —Leviticus 19:11 Ken Stegall, an admired preacher friend, wrote about a man who had a small grocery store in Sheridan, Arkansas in the 1940s. A customer told him she needed a large chicken. He reached into the ice bin, […]