Older women are needed to serve all over the local church. They are needed to meet with other women in their homes for Bible studies. They are needed to teach other women in public and private. They are needed to meet one on one (or in small groups) in intentional discipleship relationships. It’s one of my greatest joys of pastoring to hear when people in the church meet with one another simply to open the word and study together.

The powerful lyrics come from the pen of a German woman named Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel and began appearing in German hymnals in 1752. Little is known about Katharina. Some believe she may have been a “Stiftsfraulein,” a member of a female Lutheran “stift” (convent) in the town of Köthen (one hundred miles southwest of Berlin), and that she had been significantly influenced by a pietistic Christian renewal movement.

No doubt, there are good and godly reasons to live lightly upon the earth, prepared for God to send us elsewhere. But I wonder how often we are blown less by the wind of the Spirit and more by the wind of our endlessly unsettled age. I wonder too how a renewed mind, rooted more deeply in God’s word, might discern the spiritual wisdom of staying put.

While men have been full of love to their sins, at peace in them, enjoying benefit and advantage by them, the word coming upon them in its power has awed, disquieted, and terrified them, taken away their peace, destroyed their hopes, and made them, as it were, whether they would or not—that is, contrary to their desires, inclinations, and carnal affections—to conclude that if they comply not with what is proposed unto them in that word, which before they took no notice of nor had any regard unto, they must be presently or eternally miserable.

Some of my friends think Christianity has pushed women down. But Christianity actually lifted women up. We may take it for granted that women are equally valuable as men. But that was not what people in Jesus’s day believed.

God designed people with the need for counsel. Immediately after creating Adam and Eve, God begins to talk to them. He knows they need truth, which they will never discover on their own, in order to make proper sense of who they are and what they were created to do.

If you primarily think of God as your Father, and if you usually address God as Father when you pray, you have Jesus to thank. For prior to Jesus, no one — not in Judaism or in any other religious tradition — spoke of God or to God as Father in the personal ways Jesus did.

David’s life has been plagued by a steady stream of enemies, but in the end, the Lord has “delivered him from the hand of all his enemies” (2 Sam. 22:1). As David looks back in reflection on his life, he writes not a lament about how many enemies he’s had to face but a praise song for how much deliverance and faithfulness the Lord has shown.

“And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.— Luke 2:16–18

If you’re anything like me, it’s easy to find evidence of the love of God when you’re experiencing pleasurable seasons of life. But neither God nor his love change when those physical pleasures are taken away.

It was the most important event ever, accompanied by the most important song ever, containing the most important announcement ever: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased” (Luke 2:14).

Children hope for Christmas gifts that will solve their lack-of-entertainment problem. Likewise, all year round, adults hope for [fill in the blank] to solve their [fill in the blank] problem. We all carry around with us our personal catalog of “if-onlys.” Whatever sits on the other side of your “if-only” will reveal what you think your biggest problem is and where you are looking for hope.