Dr Paul Allen

I made a life plan when I was ten years old (yeah, I know, crazy). It included all the normal things: graduate high school, go to college, travel the world. With regards to romance, though, I always assumed I would get married at 23, because “Why not?” and “Surely I’ll have met somebody by then.” So, in my late teens, I arbitrarily picked a date (today, April 22, 2017) as my likely wedding day because (a) it’s a few months before my 24th birthday and (b) because I’ve always wanted a spring wedding. I added details about kids and jobs and travel along the way, but my plan has remained mostly unchanged. Pretty straightforward, right? Except the God I serve isn’t always a straightforward God. He is straightforward in what he wants from me: to act justly, love kindness, and to walk humbly with him (Micah 6:8), and to set nothing above him in my heart, mind, or soul ( Deuteronomy 6:5). But what about beyond that? What about my wedding day? Much to the woe of my control-des...

Giorgio Vasari: An angel strengthens Jesus praying in agony in Gethsemane. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will” ( Matthew 26:39 ). In a sermon titled “ The Dark Garden ,” Tim Keller explains how he came to understand that a god without wrath and Hell is not as loving as the God we find in the Bible: Because [a cup of poison] was the method of execution for many people,…the Hebrew prophets came to use the cup as a metaphor for the wrath of God on human evil…. For example…Isaiah 54: “You will drink the cup of His fury and stagger.” So the reason why [ Christian martyrs ] who died for what they believed in didn’t die the way Jesus is dying—didn’t fall to the ground, didn’t find this horror coming down—was that they didn’t face the cup. They didn’t face the justice of God against all human wickedness and evil, which was just about to come down on [Jesus]…. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane that I...