Today’s Walk in the Word

Be gentle toward everyone.                —Titus 3:2 An incident of road rage or a random freeway shooting reveals the breaking point of someone who has spun out of control. Most people never reach that stage—even so, in every vehicle there’s a story being played out in real time. Each […]

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.                                    —James 4:7 Satan messed up Eve’s garden with a one-point game plan: He got her to covet the one thing that was off-limits. Eve lived in paradise, a farm […]

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.                                        —Isaiah 5:20 John Wayne said, “There’s right and there’s wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one and you’re living. You […]

Leave it alone for one more year.                    —Luke 13:8 When the vineyard owner said to chop down the fruitless tree, the vinedresser asked for one more year: “If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.” It’s the gospel of another chance. […]

Why should it use up the soil?                   —Luke 13:7 Jesus pictured a vineyard owner who’d had it with a fruitless fig tree: “For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should […]

They are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.                  —2 Peter 2:20 Kids find it hard to resist throwing a rock through the window of an unoccupied house. Emptiness invites mischief. Jesus told a story about an evacuating demon, wandering for a spell […]

We have this treasure in jars of clay.              —2 Corinthians 4:7 If you’ve purchased a pricey piece of jewelry, it was probably gift-wrapped on a black velvet background, designed to draw the recipient’s eye to the gem, not the packaging. Paul wanted his readers to know that the gem […]

Go now and leave your life of sin.                          —John 8:11 There, for all to see, was the photo of a high-profile politician caught in a prostitution sting. How embarrassing! Another photo pictured a notorious sleazebag, being arrested for a Ponzi scam. How embarrassing! […]

Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards.     —Song of Songs 2:15 Foxes invade vineyards, eat the grapes, and trash the vines. The foxes must be destroyed, or they will destroy the vineyards. The little foxes of greed, deceit, and envy are more deceptive than the big foxes of […]

[There is] a time to weep and a time to laugh.                           —Ecclesiastes 3:4 It was a small town where everybody knew everybody. Our little church was growing. We were running out of space. We needed to build. Dwight Mann was a prominent […]