John 20:19–29
Every scar has a story. The one on my finger is from a knife I was told to leave alone. I didn’t listen. The one on my leg is from a bicycle crash I’d rather forget. And the one on my stomach is from a piece of metal that chipped off a steel chisel at exactly the wrong moment.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 10”
John 20:11–18
A man I read about was adopted at birth and grew up with no knowledge of his biological family. In his forties, a DNA service connected him with a half-sister he had never known. They exchanged careful, tentative messages for weeks. Then one afternoon she called him, and the moment he heard her voice, something unexpected happened. She said his name, and he wept.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 9”
1 Corinthians 15:12–24
A historian I read about spent two years trying to disprove the resurrection. He was not a believer, he was a skeptic, and he approached the accounts of Easter the way a detective approaches a crime scene: looking for inconsistencies, alternate explanations, reasons to dismiss. He catalogued the evidence on both sides. He interviewed scholars. He traced the manuscript traditions.
Two years later, he had not disproved it. He had, instead, found his objections answered one by one, until what remained was a historical event he could not explain away. He became a Christian not by feeling but by following the evidence where it led.
Paul made the same kind of argument to the Corinthian church. Some believers there had begun to doubt whether resurrection was real, perhaps, like many in the Greek world, they found a bodily resurrection philosophically distasteful. Paul responded with bracing logic: if there is no resurrection, then Christ was not raised. And if Christ was not raised, then your faith is empty, your sins are unforgiven, and those who have died in Jesus are simply gone (1 Corinthians 15:17–18, ESV).
He did not soften this. The resurrection is not decorative to Christianity. It is load bearing. Everything hangs on it. If the tomb is still occupied, the whole structure collapses. What Christ has been raised from the dead means is not a footnote to the faith. It is the foundation.
But, and this is the word that changes everything, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:20, ESV). The verb is perfect tense: a past event with ongoing, permanent effect. He rose, and He remains risen. Death has been defeated, not in theory but in fact, in history, in a garden outside Jerusalem on a Sunday morning.
This Good Friday, we pause at the cross, not because the story ends there, but because it can’t be skipped. The resurrection is glorious precisely because the death was real. He carried what we could not carry, so that we might live what we could not live on our own.
What doubts have you carried about the resurrection? How would your daily life look different if you lived as though Christ’s resurrection were the most certain fact in your world?
Risen Christ, thank You for dying a death that was real so that You could offer a life that is eternal. I choose today to build everything on the truth of an empty tomb.
Exodus 2:23–25
For eighteen months, a woman I know wrote weekly letters to her estranged adult daughter who refused all contact. She never knew if the letters were read, returned, or thrown away. The silence was total. She kept writing anyway, because the love didn’t stop just because the replies did.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 6”
John 14:1–10
Maybe you’ve been there. You’re hiking a trail, the fog rolls in thick, and suddenly you can barely see five feet ahead. Your map is useless, all the landmarks you’d been following have disappeared. You’re standing at a fork in the trail, genuinely unsure which way leads back to the trailhead and which leads deeper into the backcountry.
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 5”
John 13:6–20
A master woodworker once described the most discouraging phase of any project: the middle. “The beginning is exciting,” he said. “You have vision, you have energy. The end is satisfying, you can see the finished piece. But the middle? The middle just looks like a mess of sawdust and mistakes. That’s when most people quit.”
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 4”
Romans 8:18–27
A cellist I once heard interviewed said something that has stayed with me for years. She was asked which pieces she found most moving to perform. Without hesitation, she said the slow, mournful ones, the adagios, the elegies, the laments. “There’s something in sadness,” she explained, “that reaches for what beauty is supposed to be. Joy tells you it exists. Longing tells you where to look.”
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 3”
Romans 5:1–11
I read about a woman who spent three years training for a marathon she never ran. A stress fracture sidelined her two weeks before race day. She said later that the hardest part wasn’t the physical pain, it was the quiet, creeping question that followed her for months: What’s the point of all this effort if it can be taken away so easily?
Continue reading “The Hope of Easter: Day 2”
Isaiah 50:10
There are stretches in life when you do everything right and still feel lost. You read your Bible. You pray. You show up on Sunday. And yet the fog stays. The confusion lingers. Some of us are walking through one of those stretches right now, and the hardest part isn’t the darkness itself. It’s wondering whether we did something wrong to end up in it.
Continue reading “When the Dark Won’t Lift”
“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the LORD you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my lifetime.’” (Isaiah 39:8, NIV)
Life can feel like a roller coaster. One moment we’re celebrating a victory; the next we’re facing a crisis that shakes us to the core. King Hezekiah knew this reality well. His life reads like a dramatic story—miraculous healing followed by foolish pride, divine favor followed by sobering consequences. Yet in his journey, we find wisdom for navigating our own ups and downs.
Continue reading “Lessons from a Roller Coaster Life”
There’s something honest about calling this past year what it really was for many of us: a collection of failures and disappointments that culminated in something we didn’t expect. The ancient Israelites knew this feeling intimately. Their disobedience and rebellion led them into Babylonian captivity, where they watched their beloved Jerusalem reduced to literal ruins. The temple destroyed. The walls crumbled. Everything they had known and trusted lay in rubble around them. It wasn’t just bad luck or unfortunate circumstances; their own choices had contributed to the devastation. And now they sat among the wreckage of what used to be, wondering if restoration was even possible. If that’s where you are as this year ends, you’re not alone in the rubble.
Continue reading “What God Does With Ruins”
The lights are up. The carols are playing. Everyone around you seems wrapped in warmth and wonder. And maybe you’re just trying to make it through.
Maybe this is your first Christmas without someone you love. Maybe your family is fractured, and the empty chair at the table feels like an accusation. Maybe you’re alone, not by choice, but by circumstance, and the world’s insistence on togetherness only amplifies the ache. Maybe your home isn’t the haven the Christmas cards promise, and you’re bracing yourself for tension instead of peace.
Continue reading “When Christmas Feels Heavy”
Read: Isaiah 32-37
Today’s Passage: Isaiah 35:4
The headlines assault us daily with an unrelenting stream of troubling news—terrorism, economic instability, natural disasters, and wars. Each story can fill believers with fear and anxiety, draining us emotionally until we wonder if anything good remains in this world. Yet amid this uncertainty, Isaiah 32-37 offers a powerful reminder of God’s faithfulness and protection.
Throughout these chapters, Isaiah presents a beautiful contrast: the promise of Christ’s coming kingdom (Isaiah 32:1-8, 15-20) and the Lord’s assurance of victory over our enemies (Isaiah 33:5-6, 21-22; 34:8; 35:4, 10; 37:5-7, 22-35). The central message rings clear in Isaiah 35:4: ‘Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”‘ This verse encourages believers to stand firm in God’s power during difficult times.
This assurance isn’t a generic promise for everyone—Isaiah is speaking directly to believers. For those who trust in the Lord, fear doesn’t have to be our default response. We don’t need to sit around worrying, allowing anxiety to rob us of joy. The reason is beautifully simple: He is our God. As Isaiah 59:19 reminds us, ‘When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD will lift a standard against him.’ This assurance helps believers stand firm and trust in God’s protection.
When we genuinely believe in the Lord, nothing can defeat us. Through obedience comes the victory that Jesus won on the cross. We are His adopted children, and He will defend us. Romans 8:31 asks the rhetorical question that should settle our hearts: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
However, this promise doesn’t mean life will be easy. If Jesus is our example—and He faced tremendous hardship—we can expect struggles too. We’re engaged in a daily battle against the world, the flesh, and Satan. Each seeks to defeat us and hinder our walk with the Lord.
Fear is one of Satan’s most effective weapons, and he wields it with precision. When we doubt God’s power, give in to worry, or forget what the Lord has done, the enemy gains a foothold in our lives. But we must not accept fear into our hearts when the Lord is just one prayer away. Remember: fear is the opposite of faith.
As 2 Timothy 1:7 declares, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” In these uncertain times, let us cling to God’s promises in Isaiah, standing firm in faith rather than cowering in fear. When fear rises, turn in prayer and cling to the promises of God (Isa. 35:4) so that our hearts are reminded of who our God is.
1 Corinthians 10:31 – “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (ESV)
Many Christians wrestle with what to do about Halloween. For some, it’s a harmless night of candy, costumes, and community. For others, it feels like a celebration of darkness and evil. It’s easy to see why opinions vary—Halloween’s history is tangled. Its roots include pagan harvest festivals and later Christian observances like All Saints’ Day. Yet, over the centuries, it has evolved into a cultural event rather than a spiritual one. The question we must ask isn’t merely “Where did it come from?” but “What do we make of it now?”
Continue reading “Redeeming Halloween”
Psalm 34:18
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
Few wounds cut as deeply as losing a loved one to suicide. It leaves behind unanswered questions, lingering guilt, and a silence that seems impossible to fill. Even the strongest faith can feel shaken in the wake of such tragedy. Yet it’s often in these dark valleys that the quiet presence of God becomes most real. Scripture does not hide from grief—it meets us there.
Continue reading “Finding Hope After the Unthinkable”
Central Haywood Church of Christ 