01/29/2026
Not If, But When, the Crisis Comes
One of the best Bible commentators alive today is N.T. Wright or Tom Wright. When reflecting on the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, he wrote this:
“What matters is being ready; being prepared; being wise; thinking ahead, realizing that a crisis is coming sooner or later and that if you don’t make preparations now, and keep them in good shape in the meantime, you’ll wish you had.
“… And in this new era, no less than in the unique time of Jesus and his first followers, we need as much as ever the warning that it’s easy to go slack on the job, to stop paying attention to God’s work and its demands, to be unprepared when the moment suddenly arrives.”
It reminds me of the Spirit’s critique of the Laodicean church when it says that the people of God started our strong but “have forgotten their first love.” They’d taken the grace of God they found in Jesus for granted. We don’t know when Jesus will return, nor do we know if our next doctor’s visit will bring a troubling diagnosis, or if our loved ones will stay happy and safe, or if our job might not give way to AI. The crisis and its timing can’t be known, but we should all prepare for one crisis or another right now.
And for us that means building a stronger and deeper faith that can stand up to hardship, grief, and disappointment. Again, let me mention 21 scriptures and reflection questions that are out on the Welcome desk. It’s a good place to start!
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Not Just for Parents
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If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.