Having been in ministry for more than 30 years, I have often counseled people dealing with serious bouts of anxiety. As a human being, I have personally dealt with anxiety. And there are more people who wrestle with it than those who come to a pastor for counsel. Academics who study such things estimate that, in the United States, anxiety now exceeds depression as the top mental illness, if that is the right word. At any given time, some six million Americans are afflicted by

There is an infinite gap between God and His creation. Isaiah 57:15 calls Him “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy.” God inhabits eternity; we humans inhabit time. His understanding is infinite, according to Psalms 147:5. Ours is limited. God has no counselor, and His counsels and plans are beyond the human capacity to know, anticipate, or even guess.

The easiest part of any renovation is not the rebuilding—it’s the demolition. Anyone with a sledgehammer can tear down walls. In a matter of minutes, hours of master construction can be reduced to a pile of rubble. Destruction requires little skill; construction demands wisdom, patience, and perseverance. The same principle is true spiritually. Faith is not built overnight. It is cultivated over years

The theme of Psalm 1 in one word is “happiness.” By happiness I mean blessedness. In the simplest terms, Psalm 1 prescribes the life that brings deep-seated joy. When we engage in surface conversation with each others, we often communicate that we wish happiness on them. We say things like, “Have a great day!” At the holiday time we say, “Merry Christmas.” That is, a happy, joy-filled Christmas to you and your family. Shortly after that, we tell people “Happy New Year.”

What if the parable on forgiveness had turned out differently? In Matthew 18, Jesus told a parable about a king who, while reconciling his accounts, discovered that one of his servants owed him ten thousand talents. That much money was well over 100,000 years of wages and, as one commentator points out, “probably represented more than all the actual coinage in circulation in most kingdoms at the time.”

Baseball has long been used as a metaphor for life. Through the seemingly infinite number of possibilities in a game, America’s pastime mirrors the countless possibilities in our own lives. The game will teach you, humble you, fill you with pride and joy, and sometimes break your heart. Baseball has lessons for all of us. What no one ever talks about are the life lessons found in the stands. Yet, there are just as many there as there are on the field.