A Surprising Hope: Barren Wombs and Unexpected Fruitfulness
Billings preaches the biblical pattern of barren wombs becoming the very means by which God brings forth promise, from Sarah through Hannah to Elizabeth. A talk about waiting, hope, and the kind of fruitfulness that resists every category we try to put around it.
Listen to this essay
Read by an AI voice generated by ElevenLabs
Continue Reading
More Articles
Two Views of Mortality
Billings is dying of cancer, and the bones inside him are described by a doctor as 'like Swiss cheese.' He writes about how Christians and the wider culture talk about death, and why those two ways of talking diverge so sharply at the end.
Arguing From Evidence: Why Support Israel?
Evangelical support for Israel is often dismissed as purely theological, a matter of obscure end-times prophecies. Wisdom argues there's plenty of evidence that doesn't require special revelation: a small minority people surviving repeated attempts at extermination is unique enough to read on the surface.
A Framework, Not a Roadmap: Christians Can Foster Peace, Justice, and Freedom in the Middle East
The Bible doesn't supply a roadmap for Mideast policy, but it does offer a framework. Wisdom draws principles from the biblical story: God owns the land, the powerful tend to dominate the powerless, the people of God must act justly toward outsiders, and no political order can be trusted absolutely.
The Foundation of Our Calling
Burnett opens Ephesians 1 and finds Paul piling blessing on blessing: chosen before the foundation of the world, predestined in love, sealed for an inheritance. The piece sits with the dizzying generosity of Paul's grammar and asks what it means that our calling is grounded that deep.
Paul’s Theology of Sexual Practice: A Study of 1 Corinthians 6:9-20
Bailey brings thirty-five years of work on 1 Corinthians to bear on chapter 6's strenuous teaching about sexual practice. Paul wrote the letter for the Corinthians and for everyone everywhere on whom Christ's name is called, and the early church through Calvin agreed: he meant exactly what he said.
Sex and the City of God: Part I
How should the church speak about sex when the culture can talk of little else? David Swanson preaches on 1 Corinthians 6 and argues that the body matters, that it is a temple of the Holy Spirit, and that it belongs to the Lord.