mercy

Prayer Tips: Keeping Attentive

Keith Kauffman
Aug 25, 2021
They had one job to do: stay awake and pray. Peter, James, and John, often like the rest of us, failed to accomplish the one simple task they had. Christ took his most trusted inner apostolic circle deeper into the garden with Him as He went a stone’s throw further to spend time in prayer. He...

François and Christine Coillard – A Love Story

Simonetta Carr
Feb 9, 2021
François and Christine Coillard – A Love Story When François Coillard first introduced himself as a teacher to the people of Leribé, in today’s Lesotho, they looked at him in disbelief. “The Teacher!” one of them said. “And what should he teach? He is a young man. He has neither wife nor beard.” [1...

Communicable Attributes: What Is the Mercy of God?

Persis Lorenti
Nov 5, 2020
I remember hearing this question in a Bible study more than once, and this was the common answer: “Mercy is not getting what we deserve.” While it's short and pithy, is mercy as simplistic as that? Is it only the commutation of a sentence or stay of execution? Or is mercy much richer and deeper? To...

Closely Connected Care

Nick Batzig
Sep 12, 2017
With each cultural crisis or natural disaster, our minds are freshly flooded with a litany of images and calls to come to the aid of our neighbors who have been the victims of an injustice or who have suffered loss. One of the downsides of living in a media-connected age is that we can't escape the...

Nothing Like It in All the World

Richard D. Phillips
Dec 9, 2016
Recently, in my Bible reading, I came to the book of Jonah (I've been working through the Minor Prophets). It struck me how remarkable this message is compared to everything else in the ancient world. Homer was a contemporary of Jonah (mid 8th century b.c.), and his epic books of the early Grecian...

The Gentleness and Fierceness of Christ

Ian Hamilton
Jun 16, 2016
Isaiah's first Servant Song (Is.42:1-4) pictures a Servant who is gentle, patient, unthreatening and tender hearted. It is a magnificent portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect Servant of the Lord. It is remarkable that in his recorded public ministry, on only one occasion did Jesus draw...

Not Just a Soup Kitchen by David Apple

Guest blogger
Sep 17, 2014
Today, so many churches are comfortable following the practice of previous generations that didn't involve themselves in ministries of mercy. Many today are fearful of thinking "outside of the box" and lack vision and biblical direction. In 1983, one small group at Tenth Presbyterian Church in...