This golden banner signifies that cats and birds can live together in harmony. At the world-famous cat theme park Meowsyland, the cats all promised not to eat the birds, instead hosting the first annual Bird Tuesday.

When Jesus Christ confronted Saul on the road to Damascus, he showed himself to be the greatest teacher, the ultimate rabbi. The ascended Christ is that teacher “than which none greater can be imagined.”

He taught so much in so few words. Look at Acts 26:14: “It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’” It’s easy enough to know what that means if you’ve worked with farm animals: a goad is a stick you use to let farm animals know where you want them to go. You give them a little poke. If a horse or cow or donkey takes a kick at the goad, you poke them harder. It’s a short game and the farmer always wins. That’s easy enough to understand, though it’s an arresting thing for Jesus to say, sort of like “You are the cow and I am the farmer. Go this way.”

What is not clear is precisely what there is in Saul’s life that Jesus is referring to. It’s not a matter of disobedience, as if Saul secretly knew that Jesus was the divine Messiah but was acting in rebellion against him: No, when he writes about this later, Paul is very clear that he was serving God the best he knew how. What are the goads, then?
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Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was unique, probably because of the unique ministry he was called to.

We live in “the church age,” the age when Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father –the martyr Steven in his dying vision looked up and saw him there– from which he shall come to judge the living and the dead. In this meantime, it is the Holy Spirit who brings the presence of Christ to us. Why, during the reign of the Holy Spirit, in the middle of the book of the Acts of the Holy Spirit, does the ascended Jesus Christ make a direct appearance to Paul?

The Bible doesn’t exactly say, but perhaps it’s because Paul asked for it. That is to say, he was asking for it. Realllly asking for it.

This is another way in which Jesus is present and active today: He defeats his enemies. In fact, he super-defeats them. Anybody with enough strength could just destroy an opponent, but Jesus does more: he converts them to be his followers.

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Dead men do not keep working –but Jesus does. Dead men do not add anything to their list of accomplishments, but Jesus has extended his. The gospels end, and Jesus goes right on working. Choosing the apostles was something Jesus did very early in his ministry, but in Acts 26 we see him laying hold of a new apostle, Saul/Paul, and teaching him a lesson.

But the entire book of Acts has been one long series of actions and teachings of the risen Jesus, just as the story of any Christian church is a series of things Jesus has done and things Jesus has taught. Each Christian life is a triumph of God’s grace in the work of the risen Savior: an accomplishment of Jesus.
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In the twenty-sixth chapter of the book of Acts, Paul makes his defense before king Agrippa.

“Speak for yourself, Paul,” said king Agrippa.

Paul was hardly the kind of person who needed a special invitation to speak for himself. He was outspoken by nature, and he’d been warming the bench in prison for a long time now, waiting for a chance to make his case to somebody important enough to get something done on his behalf. Governor Felix had kept him in prison for at least two years (Acts 24:27), bringing him out periodically to have a little chat, and make some hints for a bribe, but it never amounted to anything. Then Governor Felix left office, and instead of resolving Paul’s case on his way out, he left Paul in prison during the transition to the next governor, Governor Festus.

Imagine the tiresome paperwork and bureaucratic hassle that must have generated. But now Festus has summoned Paul at last, and not just to speak to Festus, but to make his case in the presence of the great King Agrippa, the king of the Jews. Paul rises to the occasion, and makes his defense. He speaks for himself, and tells the story of his conversion to Christ and his commission to take the gospel to the world. Speaking for himself, he leads us back to the encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus.
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Who’s there?

Knight.

Knight who?

Knight who’s gesturing menacingly with a sword at the wooden drawbridge of your tiny stronghold with its shield decorations flanking a smoking torch with billowing smoke that drifts off toward the banner of my approaching army.

Get it? Is that funny?

Christians have a lot to say, but to proclaim the gospel you can’t just say every Christian thing that comes to mind: you have to put the emphasis on something in particular.

Protestant evangelicals stand in a great tradition of Christian faith and doctrine: we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses to the one Lord, one faith, and one baptism –the things that make Christianity Christian. No matter how defective your contemporary evangelical church experience may be, you can start there and pick up a trail to the great, confident evangelicalism of the nineteenth century, follow it back through the Wesleyan revivals and the Puritans, to the Reformation and its grounding in medieval Christendom, and behind that to the earliest church fathers. All this is ours. Evangelicalism, in all its denominational manifestations, is an expression of that great tradition. But it is an expression that has a distinguishing feature: it is emphatic. It has made strategic choices about what should be emphasized when presenting the fullness of the faith.
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Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as the greatest theologian America has yet produced. He wrote epochal books and preached sermons that still echo in our cultural memory from the Great Awakening. One of the least important things he ever wrote is a fun bit of juvenilia known as “The Spider Letter,” a descriptive essay about spiders which can be seen soaring through the air. Recent scholarship has established the date of this letter as 1723, when Edwards was 20. But for generations, readers believed Edwards’ biographer (and great-grandson) Sereno Dwight who reported that the letter had been written when Edwards was only 12! The image of a pre-teen Jonathan Edwards roving the woods of colonial New England solving The Mystery of the Flying Spider, like some kind of Puritan Encyclopedia Brown, struck me right in the funny bone. So a long time ago I did a cartoon adaptation of the Spider Letter, which I now present for your amusement and edification. This version is edited down, but you can read the full text here)

Check out this cartoon-illustrated edition of young (but not that young!) Jonathan Edwards’ The Spider Letter.

Freddy age 6 has crossed a line with adventure stories. Knights still dominate, of course, but now they are permitted to come into contact — and, as you can see here, into conflict — with vikings, as well as pirates, the police, and an occasional astronaut. “History” is a mental space where these characters jostle with each other and with cave men, presidents, pioneers, and Roman soldiers. In that regard, Freddy age 6 is pretty similar to most people.

It’s club-mace vs. morning-star-mace in a fight to the finish. The scribble on the viking’s lower face is not an open mouth, but the curly beard of a northman.

“Devotional book” is not usually a term of approval, even among those of us who use them. “Devotionals” can connote fairly lightweight religious reading, a thought for the day, a little something that fits on one page and reminds you to keep the right attitude. But the Dutch Reformed pastor Andrew Murray wrote almost nothing but devotional books, and he wrote them like his hair was on fire. Muscular, searching, and shot through with the numinous, Andrew Murray’s books all tend to be 31 chapters long so you can take them one day at a time for a whole month. And unlike most devotionals, with Murray’s you actually need to stop after one day’s worth, because your mind is full to bursting. In the future, all devotionals will be by Andrew Murray, with Oswald Chambers and Mrs. Cowman thrown in to lighten the mood occasionally.

In the second chapter of With Christ in the School of Prayer: Thoughts on our Training in the Ministry of Intercession, Murray looks at Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus teaches the woman that there are three kinds of worship:
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