For All It's Worth

Giving Each Other the Benefit of the Doubt At the slightest instance of gossip, do we enter into the conversation and pile up our baggage about another person’s character, personality, or appearance?  Giving each other the benefit of the doubt means thinking the best of someone and their intentions even when we get the sinking feeling that there are ulterior motives on the horizon.  Giving the benefit of the doubt means also bearing with people, loving them well even when in the past they’ve sinned against us.  The Scriptures connect the way we perceive others and also give them the benefit of the doubt through various lenses, one of which is the theme of love found in 1 Corinthians 13.  Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7, “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all...

Recalling the Hope of Glory: Biblical Worship from the Garden to the New Creation by Allen Ross What is the foundational element of worship from a theological perspective?  Why do we worship in the way we do as Christians?  All these questions are encountered in the delightful and carefully written book, Recalling the Hope of Glory by Professor Allen Ross.  Ross is known for his insightful works on the Psalms (both from Kregel Academic) and his work on Biblical Hebrew.  In this book on worship, Allen begins by cataloging the lowly and unsatisfying picture of worship in many of our churches as a mundane affair that is casually done by its participants.  Instead, Ross rightly posits worship as “a transcendent meeting with the living God (39).”  The reason that so much of our worship is lacking in substance and vision is the deficit of a robust biblical and theological of worship that undergirds all of what we do and say concerning worship (38...