Mike Mason's Blog

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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The Baby Government: A Modest Supposal

Back by popular demand, here’s a piece I published several years ago, which will be included in my new collection of parables. The relevance of this one becomes more and more apparent with each passing day … Nobody was very surprised when the Baby Party came to power. For decades the Babies had been steadily […]

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The Resurrection Begins Now: Happy Easter!

Matthew Jones, son of my friend David, died in February at the age of 29, after a four-year battle with neuroblastoma. Matthew was raised as a Christian, but he never believed until one day, a few months before he died, when the pain of his cancer was so intense that it felt like nails being […]

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The Answer to All Questions: SPLAT!

Reading C.S. Lewis this morning, one sentence caught my eye: “Christ takes it for granted that people are bad.”  This is true. It’s true that people are bad, and it’s true that Jesus knew it. Nevertheless He loved us, and He came into this evil world knowing full well what He was up against. Even […]

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Most Reverend Fred: The Shock of the Lord’s Prayer

I’ve been studying the Lord’s Prayer in the middle of the night. Not every night, but once or twice a week I find myself lying awake for a couple of hours, for no particular reason. Lately I’ve employed this time by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, very slowly, meditating on each phrase, until I fall back […]

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Choosing Joy at Ten Years Old: A Little Brother Story

What follows is a passage I originally wrote for my book The Mystery of Children, but which didn’t survive the final edit. It tells of a time in my twenties when I was a caseworker with Big Brothers, an organization that matches men with fatherless boys in a mentoring relationship. The stories I could tell […]

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Jesus for President: The God Who Likes You

There are dozens—maybe hundreds—of names and epithets for Jesus. The photo below shows the cover of a notepad that I keep on my desk, featuring just a few of these. Most of us have heard these titles so often that some of the shine or sparkle has faded from them. When that happens, we may […]

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The Invention of Hell: An Interview with Death

In 1989 I published a collection of parables entitled The Furniture of Heaven. Now here’s a parable from a new book I’m working on.  A man went for a job interview with Death.  Death wore a stylish brown leather suit and sat behind an extremely long, broad, highly polished table with absolutely nothing on it.  […]

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