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A Future So Bright
Because we believe it is our due, we are confident that even the darkest clouds have silver linings. When someone dies in old age, we rejoice that he had a long and full life. When someone is taken suddenly, we …Read More
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The Pastor and the Funeral
The subject I have been asked to write about was one of my greatest fears upon entrance into pastoral ministry. But today I consider it one of my greatest privileges. Why? Because of the historicity and glorious message of the …Read More
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How Now Shall We Die?
Woody Allen, the well-known movie director, screenwriter, and actor, once said, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” The quirky quotation is famous but fatally flawed. God has the date …Read More
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Death, Disease & the Gospel
I was sixteen when my father died. It was a Sunday evening in late September of 1992 when I heard the news of his death. I had just returned from work when my mother came into my room in tears …Read More
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The Gospel and the Oncology Waiting Room
I recently sat with my wife in the waiting room at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. We were there to meet with Dr. Lupe Salazar to receive the results of Julia’s latest PET/CT scans. The goal: to determine …Read More
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Don’t Waste Your Cancer: An Interview with Matt Chandler
Tabletalk: By way of offering a brief introduction of yourself and your family, when was God’s call to serve His people confirmed for you? Matt Chandler: I think my story is a bit strange in that my awareness of …Read More
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Unregrettable, Hard Words
2 Corinthians 7:8–9 “For even if I made you grieve with my letter, I do not regret it—though I did regret it, for I see that that letter grieved you, though only for a while. As it …Read More
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The Beautiful Tears
In John 11, Jesus weeps. His tears, shed in response to Lazarus’ death and Mary and Martha’s grief, are full of embodied truth, beauty, and goodness. Why did Jesus weep? He delayed coming to Bethany “so that the Son …Read More
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The Frozen Chosen
Reformed Christians are often accused of being cold and callous, virtual Stoics or fatalists. We’ve all heard the epithet “the frozen chosen” applied to Reformed believers. We usually protest that such a nickname does not truly describe us, and …Read More
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The School of Jesus Christ
When I first received the intelligence of the death…of your son Louis, I was so utterly overpowered that for many days I was fit for nothing but to grieve; and albeit I was somehow upheld before the Lord by …Read More
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Hope
Strange as it might seem, I was actually looking forward to seeing her, and wondering how she would react to seeing me. Two years ago my dear wife Denise was stricken with cancer. She received excellent treatment, and faced …Read More
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Good Grief?
I suppose I grew up like most of my generation, reading and watching Charlie Brown and the rest of the cast of Charles Schultz’s PEANUTS. Schultz had an uncanny ability to relate a sea of emotion in a cup …Read More
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From Grief to Glory
My father was slowly relinquishing his fragile life. His once sharp mind was now confused with the bleakness of Alzheimer’s. The cumulative effect of the medication to sustain his heart was destroying his liver, and the drugs needed to …Read More
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A Grief Observed
What’s wrong with this picture? I’m speaking of my assignment for this month’s issue of Tabletalk. Over the years, my articles have been generally written out of a concern to communicate content of a biblical or theological …Read More
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Sin, Death, and Grief
My father was a veteran of World War II, the son of a small-town country preacher, school teacher, and sheriff, the son-in-law of the automobile manufacturer Preston Tucker, a fellow college graduate of Sam Walton, the leader of one …Read More
