Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 2 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

IT IS HARDLY FAIR to refer all the meaning there is in these words of inspiration to the mineral treasures hid in the hills, or their wealth of timber or pasture, or in their springs, or rugged fastnesses, na­ture’s strong fortifications. “Our fathers worshiped in this moun­tain,” said Jesus.² Always in the heights of the hills has there been a sug­ges­tive­ness in the minds of the races, that as heaven was “on high,” so the heights were nearer to God. It is true also that re­markable events, some of them the most momentous that humanity knows, occurr­ed on these same heights. The second cradling of the race was on Mt. Ararat.³ The Law for God’s whole world was a mountaintop revelation.⁴ Mount Mor­iah was the scene of Abraham’s greatest trial,⁵ and the heaven-ap­point­ed place [continue reading…]

Palm Sunday, March 2026

An Easter Verb

(See image credit below.)¹

Dear Friend,

I’m writing these words on Palm Sunday 2026. And I’m putting off the conclusion of our series on Little Faith and God’s Faith because a word has been impressed on my heart. It’s a Greek word that sneaked up on me during my morning Greek research this past week; but now it’s also an abiding Easter verb for me because of its special association with the Resurrection.

Here’s the background: Oikos (οἶκος) is a very common New Testament noun. It means a house or dwelling or just about any place a person might live; and by simple extension, it also means household, that is, all the people who live in the oikos. There’s a closet full of oikos-related words in the New Testament, some of which come down to us in English, like our word economy (oikonomía / οἰκονομία — management of a household).

A related verb—oikéō / οἰκέω—means to dwell [in a home]. It’s used of a married couple dwelling with each other (1 Corinthians 7:12-13), and of [continue reading…]

John Bowring
(1792-1872)

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 1 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

The above words of the poet Hood² tell with simplicity and ever fresh­ness just a few things which draw after them memories ev­ery heart weaves into its own life story. The following from our own Bryant³ no less touch the deep memories of life’s first years.

I stand upon my native hill again,
Broad, round, and green, that, in the southern sky
With garniture of waving grass and grain,
Orchards and beechen forests, basking lie;
While deep the sunless glens are scooped between,
Where brawl o’er shallow beds the streams unseen.⁴

One cannot well escape [continue reading…]

Thoro Harris
(1874-1955)

Copyright © 2007¹

Introduction to the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

This article is also available in the complete paperback version.

There are days when the tides of life seem turned back, and we obey the divine injunction, “Remember the days of old.”² It is not that we have willed to do so, or had so planned it. These days just come. They have their own times and seasons. We know not their day and hour. We cannot produce them at will. They drift in on us as a “sweet refrain,” setting aside the present or so molding it and suffusing it with a softened, mellowed light that life is ever afterward different, owing to the new meaning brought in. We pay little attention to these memories. We may not even cherish the occasion or give the suggested thought any special attention.

Perhaps these seasons belong more to middle and post-meridian life than to youth, and yet I remember they began with me early. After the win­ter school closed and the long vacation followed, and I saw not the happy faces any more, I remember how fondly, and yet with a cherished sadness, the hours of remembrance would come on me and make me almost live over the lost hours. Later, when school life, [continue reading…]

14 February 2026

Blurry, Busy Winter Months

Dear Friend,

In the walk of faith, sometimes the way forward is clear, and other times it’s blurry…¹

It’s been so long since our last newsletter that folks were beginning to wonder if we’re okay. Okay? Certainly, and blessed. But busy? Oy vey, yes! Although things are settling down a bit and coming into focus now, life has been somewhat of a blur since November’s newsletter. For instance:

• In December I spent a week back in our old stomping grounds of Chesapeake, VA, flying back to help with arrangements, and doing the memorial service of our friend and next-door neighbor of 30+ years. I visited other local friends with what time I had free.
• From Chesapeake, I brought back a “souvenir” flu that laid me low for an entire week. Normal energy levels didn’t return for another two weeks.
• We’ve been praying our way through a series of potentially difficult family “firsts without daddy” — our grandkids’ [continue reading…]

Cleland McAfee
(1866-1944)

Charles Wesley
(1707-1788)

6 November 2025

Dear Friend,

I’m showing a magnification of black mustard seeds here, but lest you think that they’re anywhere near this big…¹
…here’s a small pile of “yellow” and black mustard seeds compared with 2 centimeters (20 millimeters), or a smidge less than 13/16 of an inch.

In the last newsletter, we explored our human state of oligópistos — “little faith.” I say it’s a “human state,” because each of us, created in the image of God, has a measure of faith. But like all the elements in natural man, that measure of faith is diminished, enervated, and spoiled by sin. Human faith can accomplish certain things (the old phrase from the 50s and 60s—“positive thinking”—comes to mind), but in Kingdom matters it has its limits; and all too often we crash up against those limits.

The original “ye of little faith” Apostles were keenly aware of such crashing failures, and each of the Synoptic writers (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) has Jesus addressing these men when they’ve reached their limit. Two incidents are similar. In Matthew 17:19-20, nine of the Apostles, perplexed by their inability to deliver a demon-possessed boy, ask Jesus, “Why could we not drive it out?” “Because of the littleness of your faith,” is Jesus’ reply. And Luke 17:5-6 records their plea to Jesus at another time: “Increase our faith!” (As for Mark’s contribution, we’ll get to that in a bit.)

In both cases, Jesus’ response is the same: “If [continue reading…]

Edward Mote
(1797-1874)

30 September 2025

Dear Friend,

This concept of “little faith” is important enough that the Apostle Matthew seems to have made up this special word—oligópistos (ol·ig·OP·is·tos)—to describe the condition Jesus was pointing out. The word doesn’t seem to appear in pre-New Testament Greek.

Sincere, godly Christian lawyers—is that an oxymoron? No, there are many, as it turns out! The first two with whom I ever interacted were in the city where I was saved, first pastored, and came to spiritual maturity—Costa Mesa, California. I can’t even remember the reason we had to seek them out, but I do remember their names. Norm Juggert, the principal of the firm, was the son-in-law of a saintly Lutheran pastor named Andy Anderson. But it was Norm’s partner whose name keeps coming back to me in my current season of prayer and meditation, because of the way he introduced himself: “Hi, I’m Kenneth Yee. Yee, you know, as in ‘YE of little faith.’” (Hey, his memory trick worked. Fifty years later, I still recall his name!)

Much of my focus before the Lord lately has been to know why we aren’t seeing [continue reading…]

24 July 2026

Dear Friend,

“…yet because of his persistence he will get up
and give him as much as he needs.”
An illustration
of the Parable of the Midnight Visitor
by British artist John Everett Millais¹

Long, long ago, in a prehistoric time when there were no digital tablets, no smartphones, no personal computers, no Internet, and no artificial intelligence, I found myself far from home for many weeks without my second-most-important possession. (My most important possession was my Bible, which was at hand.) Yes, in driving nearly 3,000 miles across the country, from California to upstate New York, I had left my Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance at home. Horrors!

There I was alone on the porch of a friend’s home on a lovely summer’s day, wanting very much to pray Biblically. I hadn’t quite finished reading through the Bible for the third time (I was a few weeks away from my third spiritual birthday), so God’s Book wasn’t as familiar to me as it is now, 54 years later. I knew that there were two important passages in the Gospels where Jesus specifically responded [continue reading…]