Mike Mason's Blog

The Slippered Pantaloon: Old Age, Shame, & the Gospel

Recalling Shakespeare’s seven ages of man (in As You Like It, II, vii), at almost 75 I find myself entering upon the sixth stage—“the lean and slippered pantaloon.” And like all the elderly, I’ve started to ask some serious questions. Such as: What’s wrong with me? Why is my energy diminishing? Why am I always […]

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Unlocking the Heart: How Jesus Redeemed the World

A prayer I repeat when I have trouble sleeping comes from the traditional Stations of the Cross liturgy. It goes, “I adore You, O Christ, and I love You. By Your holy cross You redeemed the world.”  Even while saying these words, and believing them, I often wonder: But how exactly did Jesus redeem the […]

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The Mysterious Magdalene: How Many Mary’s?

No doubt you’re familiar with the old riddle, How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? My answer to this famous conundrum is that angels don’t dance on the head, they dance on the point.  Be that as it may, there’s another theological mystery just as compelling, which is the question of […]

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Remembering Brian Doerksen: Voice of Renewal

As most of you know, Brian Doerksen died last month at age 60, after a painful struggle with cancer. Longtime worship leader and recording artist, he authored some of our most beloved worship songs: Faithful One, Refiner’s Fire, Hope of the Nations, Come, Now is the Time to Worship, and many more. Brian died at […]

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Tyrannosaurus Hex: A Short Statement on the Future of Oil

As the US and Iran fight over the Strait of Hormuz, last week Toronto—two hours from where I live—had the worst air quality of any city in the world. Many American cities were also heavily polluted by smoke from the over 800 wildfires burning in Canada, which were largely due to human-caused climate change fueled […]

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Christ Our Creator: Blade Runner Meets Jesus

Years ago, while reading a paraphrase of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the first Easter morning, I was arrested by this sentence: “Hearing her name spoken, Mary turned and saw her Creator” (John 20:16).  Startled, I looked up from the page. My first reaction was that this paraphrase had gone a step […]

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Don’t Tell Anyone Who I Am: Keeping Quiet about Jesus

At the age of thirty, soon after becoming a Christian, during a visit to my parents I tried to institute a family prayer time. We had never prayed together before, never even talked about religion. My parents were church-goers, but not Christians (at least, not according to my new-found definition). They attended an Anglican church […]

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The Beatitudes: The New Law of the Gospel

In Exodus 20 the Lord God presented the Ten Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai. Some 1300 years later, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, Jesus Christ presented a new version of the Table of the Law, known as the Beatitudes, beginning with, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, […]

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Jesus’ Use of Figures of Speech: The Kingdom of God is Like …

I’ve been studying Jesus’ use of figurative language, and I’m not very surprised to discover that He employs almost every known figure of speech—and there are a lot of them! Metaphor and simile are common in Jesus’ teaching, as in His phrase, “The kingdom of God is like …” But now here are some other […]

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Divine Sovereignty: Sucker Punch to Free Will?

In a world that grows increasingly dark and chaotic, I wonder if any topic in theology is of greater significance than that of the sovereignty of God? What a comfort to our minds and hearts if we could actually trust Him to be in absolute control of everything. On the contrary, if we cannot trust […]

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