“When we meet in sweet communion,” as the old hymn says, do we recognize the significance of what we’re doing?

The simple emblems of unleavened bread and fruit of the vine represent Christ’s body and blood, given as a sacrifice to remove the stain of sin keeping an unworthy people from their God. It is vital for us to remember that sacrifice — and our unworthiness to benefit from it — when we take the emblems on the first day of the week. Too often we allow communion to become routine. Weekly concerns flood our minds and keep us from concentrating on the cross.

Most of us hear a sermon to that effect at least once per year. And most church members need only to look at the words on our church’s communion table to be reminded that Jesus asked us to take the Supper “In Remembrance of Me.”

It seems that a less-emphasized aspect of the Lord’s Supper is the way it unites us with believers around the world. Communion is a global experience — one we share with brothers and sisters in the farthest reaches of the earth. read more

God hates divorce, the prophet Malachi proclaimed.

But scan the rest of Malachi — or anywhere else in Scripture — and you’ll find no mention of God hating divorced people.

Were that the case, God would have little use for any of us. We’re all participants in the greatest divorce — separation from God because of our sins.

Malachi points to broken faith, the willful separation of Judah from its creator. But God continued to love his people and redeem them, just as he loves us despite our estrangement from him. The father’s undying love for humanity is the message of Scripture.

Why, then, do our churches have a miserable reputation when it comes to helping people whose marriages have ended in divorce? read more