Posts Tagged ‘Bible study’
Fall Chapel Service: Hope of All Creation
This October we partnered with three other campus ministries – MSU Wesley, One Community Lutheran Campus Ministry and The Peoples Church – to host a weekly communion service in the Alumni Memorial Chapel at MSU. During this service we reflected on Jesus as the hope of all creation and supported each other in our mutual…
Read MoreIsaiah and the Prophetic Call to a Just Society
At the beginning of his book, the prophet Isaiah convicts a “sinful nation, people laden with iniquity” (1:4). The society he describes is full of bribes (1:23), fixes itself on material wealth (2:7) and denies justice to orphans and widows (1:23). Even the worship of the people is meaningless without justice: “bringing offerings is futile;…
Read MoreActs and the Gospel of Hope
In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28) The Book of Acts records the earliest proclamations of the gospel after the time of Jesus. Peter, Paul and others preach to Jews, Greeks, philosophers, politicians, kings and foreigners all around the Middle East. Extraordinarily, Peter and John were “ordinary, uneducated men” (4:13),…
Read MoreReading the book of Daniel
I have to admit to being a bit surprised by how much I’ve appreciated looking at the first part of the book of Daniel. As much as I love the Bible, I associate the stories of Daniel with Sunday school stories that tended towards primarily encouraging us to be good moral people. Such a simplistic…
Read MoreJudges: God uses the weak and unexpected
We’ve been looking at the book of Judges in our studies at Campus Edge. The book of Judges is strange and violent, and it’s not always clear how these ancient stories apply to our lives today. Yet, the book of Judges is clear in telling us that God raises up judges from the weak and…
Read MoreWhy talk about difficult topics?
The studies in the second half of the spring semester focused on difficult topics in Christianity and the Bible. As many people avoid these conversations because of potential conflict, it’s not always obvious why we should talk about these things. Yet, studying these difficult topics can help us love God and those around us. Reading…
Read MoreHow historical is the resurrection?
We’ve been talking this last semester about difficult topics in the Bible, and one of the topics has been how historical certain events in the Bible are. One event that presents a challenge to our understanding of how historical the events in the Bible are is the flood. After pointing out that “a global deluge…
Read MoreWorse than the nations around you
Ezekiel 5:6-7 says that Israel has been worse than the surrounding nations. Such an accusation seems strange, as it doesn’t seem merely to say that Israel was worse in not obeying the special laws that God gave them, but instead that Israel was objectively worse than those around them. How is this possible? First, Ezekiel…
Read MoreApplying Ezekiel to today
We’ve started a study on Ezekiel. The stories in Ezekiel are fascinating and peculiar, and so it is a joy for me to talk about what is going on in the text. However, the strange-ness of the text makes it difficult to see how the text might apply to our lives. Going out and being…
Read MoreGod who cannot be seen, known, or spoken about properly
Our discussions on Lauren Winner’s Wearing God and who God is have led us to recognize that despite being the God who sees us (and who we see), we can never see God fully. It is like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle where “the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can…
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