April is the month parallel to those ancient, world-changing days when Jesus made resurrection appearances. According to Luke’s Gospel, all three occurred before the anticipated Jewish Pentecost festival – held fifty days following Passover. This month’s blogs will focus on this period of Jesus’ life between the resurrection and ascension, and examine those three appearances in the […]
Archive | New Testament
Thinking About Christ As ‘High Priest’
The term “priest” is one of those Biblical words that seem pretty far from our working mental or verbal vocabulary. After all, when’s the last time anyone had to kill a sheep and carry it to an altar? Yet this is the second blog in a row with a priest at its center, with one […]
Gaining New Insights on the Easter Story
Because Madelon spent the last month in New Zealand and Australia providing Bible workshops in eight cities (see posting under ‘Events’), she is delighted to invite guest writer, Dr. Susan Humble, to once again grace readers with her inspired Scriptural insights. Dr. Humble’s thoughts about how to unpack a text will hopefully prompt you and other […]
Why The Sower and the Seed Parable Deserves Close Attention
As you study Jesus’ parables’, it becomes obvious quickly how important the Sower and the Seed story is, one of the few to appear in all three synoptic Gospels. (John’s Gospel doesn’t contain any parables.) But even more noticeable is that the Sower and the Seed story leads the rest, in Matthew (Matt. 13:3-17), Mark […]
Mary and Hannah: Women On A Spiritual Journey
December has been a month of pouring over Luke’s Gospel. If you watched the Luke Webinar * then you already know how much the evangelist is responsible for grounding the birth of Jesus in history, as well as learning of his deep ties to the Hebrew Scriptures. One of the earliest examples of these Old Testament […]