Sorting by

×
Skip to main content
Category

Magazine

Poetry

Silver moon

You have my heart which is similar to the moon’s grip on this night Dark branches reach high to embrace the sky waters bulge       in the curve of an eye   She slips from behind clouds      & then slides out of sight    The chapel on the corner stands secure     stained glass glowing in moonlight   An unseen violin plays in the dark I want to love you       like its strings love to sing    like Christ loves the church      like those…
February 28, 2018
Inside Out

Peter Marshall: Keeping the Dream

Peter Marshall Even though his path to the ministry was not an easy one, Peter Marshall, a young Scottish immigrant said, “I have determined to give my life to God for Him to use me wherever he wants me,” writes Catherine Marshall in her book A Man Called Peter. Despite his early life of adversity, he was sustained by his mother’s faith and her promise “Dinna worry, son, the Lord will provide. He’ll open up the way,” Marshall himself recalled…
February 28, 2018
As We See It

Shakespeare’s Language Lessons

“He was not of an age, but for all time!” – Ben Jonson Shakespeare indeed was a man of his age. Ask anyone sitting down to read his plays for the first time – with their 16th- and 17th-century language, idioms and references. Nevertheless, Ben Jonson’s message about his friend is obviously true: Shakespeare’s works have spoken to countless eras and cultures in the 400 years since his death, and they continue to do so as we return to his…
February 28, 2018
Essays

Olivier Messiaen: Music as Prayer

VISIONS OF AMEN: THE EARLY LIFE AND MUSIC OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN STEPHEN SCHLOESSER EERDMANS, 2014 $50 570 PAGES CONCURRENTLY RELEASED AUDIO RECORDING: MESSIAEN, VISIONS OF AMEN HYESOOK KIM AND STEPHANE LEMELIN, PIANO WWW.EERDMANS.COM/SCHLOESSER_AUDIO Few composers of the 20th century were as deeply shaped by a theological tradition as was Olivier Messiaen by French Catholicism in the period following the First World War. Born to a literary family – his mother a poet, his father an English teacher and translator of Shakespeare…
David A. Hoekema
February 28, 2018
Essays

Capital versus the World: the Protestant Principle in the 21st Century

In April 2014, Thomas Piketty’s tome on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, was released in English translation, featuring 577 pages (minus the footnotes) and some 115 or so graphs and illustrations. In May Capital reached the no. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, a fact surprising even to the publisher Harvard, which struggled to meet the furious demand for the book. The central assertion of this behemoth of a text is that capitalism, particularly since the…
February 28, 2018
Reviews

A Feast of Church Music

The Reason Why We Sing THE REASON WHY WE SING HEATHER JOSSELYN-CRANSON ORDER OF SAINT LUKE, 2016 $20 (PAPERBACK) 210 PAGES I choose and play worship songs for a living. Every year I listen to hundreds of new songs – weighing and sifting those that I hope and pray will be both a blessing and faith forming for my congregation – the community of Hope College. Most of this is a joy – achieving and arranging being two of my…
February 28, 2018
Essays

Plan A

We’ve all heard a story that goes something like this: In the beginning God created a beautiful and perfect universe. To crown his creation, he made humanity in his own image. Human beings were perfect and immortal. Life was serene and wonderful. There were no predatory animals and no death. But then came the Fall. Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and plunged creation into decay, destruction and death. The perfect creation was ruined. Now God had to come up…
Daniel Boerman
December 30, 2017
Reviews

Justice: It’s God’s Thing

The Justice Calling THE JUSTICE CALLING: WHERE PASSION MEETS PERSEVERANCE BETHANY HANKE HOANG, KRISTEN DEEDE JOHNSON BRAZOS PRESS, 2017 $18.99 (PAPERBACK) 240 PAGES Two thousand years after the greatest act of injustice, when the only truly innocent man was crucified, modern day Christians are still debating the call to do justice in the local and catholic church. To say that The Justice Calling is a timely gift to the contemporary church is a profound understatement. Why? The Justice Calling lifts…
December 30, 2017
Essays

Though There Are No Grapes

In late April two years ago, I changed the tires on my van, installing the summer tires once again – not such a memorable event and one that I had done also exactly six months earlier. On October 31, 2015, my wife and I had just put on the winter tires and, in all aspects, it was a typical fall day. The two of us were at home with our younger son, getting our property ready for winter. She had…
December 30, 2017