A Word From Casey

Life and Living… Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). In John 5:24 he says, “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” The Apostle John expands on this idea in I John 3:14 when he writes: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers and the sisters.” Finally in John 17:3 Jesus says, “this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”   All of this means, as I have written before, that believers in Christ have eternal life now. It will never end. Death cannot cause it to end! Many people in our culture are very afraid of death. I talked recently to a Christian healthcare professional who shared that even when all the medical options have been exhausted, some patients want to stay in the hospital and keep attacking the disease—ra

Waiting Two Thousand Years and Never Wrong Being diagnosed with a serious illness has been the occasion for me to reflect back on my life and to see God‘s hand at work long ago. I wrote a poem almost 45 years ago. At the time the poem “came” to me with a musical tune. As a young man I had been traveling in Pakistan and India, often staying in the homes of people I knew or met. On more than one occasion, someone had asked me to “sing them a poem.” Once in Kanpur India, staying with the Muslim father of a good friend from Pakistan (Abul Khair Kashfi), his elderly father asked me to “sing a poem.” I knew his was a pious family, and the songs I chose to sing were really hymns—“Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Amazing Grace.” He liked both hymns but especially liked the last verse of Amazing Grace, “when we’ve been there 10,000 years bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.” Later, as I was leaving Pakistan to go back to the west,

Six Things It Means to be a Christians, Part 2 In 2001 I wrote a piece called, “Six Things It Means to be a Christian.” Last week I published the first four with supporting scriptures. Here are the last two: 5. To be a Christian means that I know God through Jesus.    I come to God   through Jesus. I have peace with God and all people through Jesus. God’s   love is revealed in Jesus,   and in Jesus this   Love lives in me and overflows from me to those around me.   John 14: 6 “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.‘” Romans 5:1 “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 2:14-16: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of t