The phrase “just deserts” comes from a now obsolete meaning of the word “desert” which was something a person deserved or merited. You’ve probably heard the expression applied to people who get what was coming to them. We tend to take a certain amount of pleasure when our enemies, adversaries, and those people who manage […]

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In the fourth beatitude Jesus says, “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Those words, “hunger” and “thirst,” are descriptive of a longing for something that is so powerful it feels desperate and necessary. It is a gnawing pang, an uncomfortable awareness of a thing’s absence, that not […]

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In his book, “The Treasure Principle,” Pastor and author Randy Alcorn writes about a visit he made to Cairo, Egypt. His guide took him down an alleyway in an obscure, and poor quarter of the city until they passed through a gate into a square filled with trash and overgrown with weeds. It was a […]

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Our study through beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) brings us to verse 4; “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” In last week’s message we saw that the Greek word for blessed, “makarios,” essentially means happy, but whatever the translation and whatever English word is used the juxtaposition of “makarios” (blessed, happy) with “pentheo” […]

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The sermon on the mount spans three chapters (5-7) in Matthew. If you have one of those Bibles that prints the words of Jesus in red then you will find that those chapters are nearly a solid block of red ink. I say “nearly” because the actual content of the sermon is sandwiched between two […]

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In the Bible, God often compares His Word to food. Consider the following examples: When Jesus was being tempted by Satan He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 saying, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Psalm 119:103- “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter […]

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The Bible gives no word of encouragement to those who would quit the life of a sojourner and make a home for themselves down here. We are, after all, the spiritual descendants of Abraham who lived in tents, not Lot who settled on the plain. 1 John 2:15-17 warns against some dangerous affections that threaten […]

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Are you lonely? If you are, you might take some small comfort in knowing that you are not alone. A new report finds many Americans are lonely. The study, published by the global health service company Cigna, found that 46 percent of U.S. adults report chronic feelings of loneliness, being disconnected, and feeling as though they […]

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Here at State Road we talk a lot about becoming a people who love God, love others and love in action, but those statements rest on an implied assumption that we know what love is.  In our culture, love is a notoriously difficult word to define. This is owing, at least in part, to the limitations of the […]

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When I was a boy growing up in Vermont I used to make a little extra money in late spring and early summer by gathering morel mushrooms in the woods and selling them to a local restaurant called “The Countryman’s Pleasure.” For whatever reason morels can’t be farmed or grown commercially, and so they have […]

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