Below is an excerpt from the personal devotional included in this year’s 1517 Advent Resources.
The Lord’s provision doesn’t rest on the strength of our gratitude.
A Bit of Earth is about the garden, but it’s also about us—as we are made from dirt.

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I have the easiest time remembering all the good things I have done. How I was kind in the face of anger.
I don’t know much about golf, but I do know that The Masters is like the Super Bowl for golfers.
In those waters we are nailed to his cross and washed out the door of his tomb. Within his wounds we safely hide.
It’s strange that we’ll stuff our mouths today with a bird whose life preaches against us. For consider the turkeys, which neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
It was Jesus who appeared to Hagar, comforted her, and gave her the promise of future blessings. It was Jesus who came to her when it seemed everything and everyone else had let her down.
Recently I’ve met many people that have suffered tragedies in their families. I know this sounds a little selfish, but the ones that stick out the most to me are the ones that affected my own family.
I don’t care why you left the ministry—moral failure, congregational politics, burnout, whatever—the Christ whom you proclaimed has not left you.
Duke is my dog-in-training; although, sometimes I suspect I am actually his person-in-training. Regardless, we have both been learning a lot.
Hear that confession of saving faith? Rahab may have been a prostitute in Jericho, but she was secretly a virgin daughter of Yahweh.
As an avid movie-goer, one of the ways Scripture comes alive for me is to picture the stories as if they were scenes and beats from a live-action movie.
A while ago I ran across a great comedy routine. In it Brian Regan riffs on those who he calls Me Monsters. This is a person who must be at the center of every conversation.
The church is God’s flock. Jesus is both a lion and a lamb. The zoo turns out to be as packed with theology as a seminary, if not more.