Resource Search Results

Coop's Column - He Ascended to Heaven

God’s Word declares that Jesus, his appointed task on earth having been finished, returned to his Father in heaven. Trusting that Word, Christians triumphantly confess the words in the Apostle’s Creed: “He ascended into heaven.”

Reflection | March 11, 2011

Coop's Column - Risen Indeed

"On the third day he arose again from the dead." Simple words often capture life's most profound and important truths the best. How better, therefore, for Christians to make their most astonishing declaration about Jesus Christ than by this direct, unadorned, and so forthrightly clear confession?

Reflection | February 11, 2011

Coop's Column - So Marred, So Beautiful

Their suffering Savior’s immense love for them, far beyond their mind’s feeble ability to grasp or comprehend, now prompts Christians to worship him

Reflection | January 14, 2011

Coop's Column - God Wearing Skin

Christians believe the transcendent, holy, and eternal God, who is pure Spirit, took on weak, decaying flesh.

Reflection | December 20, 2010

Coop's Column - No Mother Half So Mild

Since both God and humans are personal, we humans can grow both in knowledge of and intimacy with God. In fact, we must grow. For to love God more and more requires that we learn more and more about God.

Reflection | December 10, 2010

Coop's Column - Father - Like He Tends and Spares Us

Jesus never tired of referring to God as his Father.

Reflection | December 03, 2010

Coop's Column - Cultivating Attentiveness

There’s a world of difference between hearing and listening.

Reflection | November 19, 2010

Coop's Column - Craving to be Adored

The longer I live, the more I become convinced three things are true: 1. God does exist 2. I am not God. 3. The first two points are worth remembering—always.” Wise words from an aged Roman Catholic priest. How easy to slip into the sin of what St. Paul terms “thinking too highly of ourselves.”

Reflection | October 29, 2010

Coop's Column - Belonging

Lonesomeness, that bleak and desperate feeling of abandonment and forsakenness, is the worst—the absolute worst—that can overtake any human being.

Reflection | October 19, 2010

Coop's Column - Prone to Wander

Rarely—almost never—do married persons make it their aim to get into an extra-marital relationship—to have an “affair.”

Reflection | September 24, 2010

Coop's Column - Glorify the Lord with Me

Modernity has a kind of airy weightlessness, a lack of seriousness and significance. So, when it comes to the matter of “setting their minds on things eternal”—that is, of paying any heed to the world beyond sight and sound—most contemporary people are pretty breezy and airy.

Reflection | September 17, 2010

Coop's Column - Declaration of Dependence

To be human is to be in need—in need of God and of one another. And to remain fully human—indeed, to flourish in it—requires that we stay in touch with, remain keenly aware of, that need.

Reflection | September 10, 2010

Coop's Column - A Heart-Stoppingly Grand Invitation

In his Word God declares that it is he, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth, who welcomes his creatures into his presence and invites them to worship him.

Reflection | August 30, 2010

Coop's Column - Jesus Yes-Church Yes!

In the Western hemisphere, especially in Europe and considerable sections of North America, vigorous contempt toward and sleepy disregard of the Christian church are widespread and increasing at an ever-accelerating rate.

Reflection | August 23, 2010

Coop's Column - Simply Fellow Strugglers

My years as chaplain among college students have convinced me that many young people suffer from what I call the "immortality virus": "Death-accidents, illness, and weakness, too-can, and sometimes do, happen to others. But it won't -read: cannot- happen to me." Or so they foolishly imagine.

Reflection | August 16, 2010

Coop's Column - O!

It's easy just to go through the motions of love without one's heart really being in it.

Reflection | August 09, 2010

Coop's Column - God Everlasting!

Learning what it means to be human involves learning to locate one’s place in the grander scheme of things—to figure out where one “fits.”

Reflection | August 02, 2010

Coop's Column - There I Have Pledged to Set My Foot, Too

"Being alive is very difficult. Human beings are very complicated. I know. I've spent my whole life being one, and I still can't totally figure it out." So commented one elderly gentleman as he looked back over the seemingly haphazard trajectory of his life's course of events.

Reflection | July 26, 2010

Coop's Column - Introduction

In this column I hope to explore each week a facet of corporate Christian worship - that is, what do Christians do together when they congregate on Sunday morning before God's face?