1st Christian Church, Lovington, IL

07/26/2026

07/13/2026

Farmer Girl
Have you ever read the genealogy in Genesis 5 and thought, "Yep... that's a list of people I'm probably going to mispronounce?"

I'll be honest. Genealogies are usually where our Bible reading suddenly becomes an Olympic speed-reading event. Adam...Seth... Enosh...yep, yep, yep...get me back to the action. But what if I told you one of the most incredible pictures of the gospel is hiding in one of those lists we usually skim right past?

The Hebrew meanings of those names are fascinating. Adam means "man." Seth means "appointed." Enosh means "mortal" or "frail." Kenan means "sorrow." Mahalalel means "the Blessed God." Jared means "shall come down." Enoch means "teaching." Methuselah is commonly understood to mean "his death shall bring." Lamech means "the despairing" or "the hopeless." Noah means "rest" or "comfort."

Now read them together.

Man is appointed mortal sorrow, but the Blessed God shall come down, teaching. His death shall bring the despairing rest.

Think about that for a minute.

The very first genealogy in the Bible isn't just a family tree. It's a whisper of the gospel.

Now, I do want to be careful here. Moses wasn't hiding a secret code for us to crack. The primary purpose of Genesis 5 is to record the genealogy from Adam to Noah. The individual name meanings are real Hebrew meanings, but putting them together into a sentence is an observation that many Christians have found striking, not something the Bible explicitly says is a prophecy. So we shouldn't build doctrine on it.

But...

Isn't it interesting?

Because when you turn to the New Testament, Jesus says something that sounds remarkably familiar.

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28, ESV)

Rest.

The very thing Noah's name points to.

The despairing find rest, not because they finally get their lives together, not because they become good enough, and not because they somehow earn God's favor. They find rest because the Blessed God came down, and His death is what brought it.

The more I study the Bible, the more convinced I become that it has one Author. There are sixty-six books, written over roughly fifteen hundred years by about forty different human authors from all walks of life. Shepherds. Kings. Prophets. Fishermen. A physician. Yet somehow they all keep telling the same story.

A story about the Blessed God who came down.

A story about His death bringing life.

A story about weary people finding rest.

Maybe that's why Jesus could say, "These are the very Scriptures that bear witness about me." (John 5:39, ESV).

Turns out...even the names in a genealogy may have been pointing to Him all along.

07/04/2026

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, which means that all across the country people will be gathering with family and friends, firing up grills, setting out lawn chairs, watching parades, and buying fireworks from tents that somehow inspire both confidence and concern at exactly the same time. In fact, I am pretty sure there is an unwritten rule that the best fireworks are always sold by someone who is either missing a finger, knows someone who is missing a finger, or has a story that begins with, "Now technically, what happened was..." and ends with a trip to the emergency room. It is all part of the experience.

There is something about this holiday that makes us stop and think about freedom. Not because our country is perfect. It is not. Not because our history is perfect. It is not. But because freedom is one of those things that is easiest to take for granted when you have always had it. Most of us did not have to fight for it. Most of us did not have to leave everything behind to find it. Most of us simply woke up one day in a country where certain freedoms already existed because somebody else paid the price to secure them.

And the more I think about that, the more I realize how similar that is to the Gospel.

Most of us have heard the story so many times that it no longer sounds shocking. Jesus died for our sins. Jesus rose again. Salvation is by grace through faith. We have heard it in church. We have heard it in Bible studies. We have heard it from pulpits and Sunday school teachers and Christian radio stations. We know the words so well that sometimes we stop marveling at what they actually mean.

Imagine hearing it for the very first time. Imagine being told that the God who created the universe knew every mistake you would ever make, every selfish decision, every failure, every sin, every moment when you would choose your own way instead of His, and He loved you anyway. Imagine being told that instead of waiting for you to somehow earn your way back to Him, He came looking for you.

Imagine being told that Jesus willingly walked toward the cross knowing exactly what awaited Him there. The betrayal. The mocking. The beating. The nails. The weight of sin. Not just the sins of the people standing there that day, but yours and mine as well. Then imagine hearing His words, "It is finished."

Not mostly finished.

Not almost finished.

Not finished if you are good enough.

Not finished if you manage to get your life together.

Finished.

Paid in full.

Debt canceled.

The prison door standing open.

Galatians 5:1 says, "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery."

I think sometimes we forget just how radical that freedom really is. We are free from the impossible burden of trying to earn God's love. We are free from believing our worst mistake gets the final word. We are free from carrying guilt that Christ already carried to the cross. We are free from spending our lives wondering whether we have somehow done enough to deserve Heaven. We are free because Jesus did what we never could.

And let's be real for a minute. If getting into Heaven depended on being good enough, some of us would be in serious trouble. I cannot even make it through a grocery store parking lot without having opinions about the people who abandon their shopping carts three feet from the cart return. Apparently my spiritual gift is noticing things that could have been prevented with approximately six more seconds of effort.

The amazing thing about Christianity is that it is not ultimately a story about what we do for God. It is a story about what God did for us. Every other system eventually comes back to trying harder, doing better, proving yourself, or earning your place. The Gospel says there is nothing you can do to earn salvation because Jesus already paid for it. The ground at the foot of the cross is remarkably level. The wealthy stand beside the poor. The educated stand beside the uneducated. The pastor stands beside the former addict. The person who has followed Jesus for fifty years stands beside the person who surrendered to Him five minutes ago. Every single one of us comes the same way: by grace.

Tomorrow many people will celebrate the freedom won by brave men and women who were willing to sacrifice for something bigger than themselves. And we should be grateful for that. We should remember that freedom is costly because somebody always pays the price.

But as thankful as I am for the freedoms we enjoy in this country, I am even more thankful for a hill outside Jerusalem where another sacrifice was made.

Because one freedom allows me to speak.

One freedom allows me to worship.

One freedom allows me to gather openly with other believers.

But the freedom Christ purchased does something even greater.

It allows a sinner to stand before a holy God and be called forgiven.

It allows the guilty to be called innocent.

It allows the lost to be called found.

It allows people like us to be called children of God.

And unlike every earthly freedom, that one cannot be voted away, legislated away, conquered away, or taken away.

Tomorrow night the fireworks will fade. The smoke will drift away. The grills will cool off. The lawn chairs will be folded up and put back in the garage until next year. The holiday will come and go just like every holiday eventually does.

But the freedom Christ purchased nearly two thousand years ago is still here.

Still available.

Still changing lives.

Still setting captives free.

And that is something worth celebrating long after the last firework burns out. The Farmer Girl

07/03/2026

The first thing I noticed about them was that they wouldn't stop singing.

Now before you think that sounds pleasant, let me explain. We were in prison. Actual prison. Not the kind where people complain because their coffee order was wrong or their wagon wheel broke on the way to town. This was a Roman prison. Stone walls. Iron chains. Dark corners. The smell of sweat, blood, mildew, and too many men packed into too little space. Most people who came through those doors spent their time cursing their circumstances, complaining about their bad luck, or plotting what they'd do if they ever got out. Hope was in short supply. Joy was nonexistent. Then these two showed up.

They had been beaten badly. Everybody could see it. Their backs were torn open from the rods. Every movement looked painful. The guards didn't just toss them into a cell; they locked their feet in stocks and shoved them into the innermost part of the prison. If anyone had earned the right to complain, it was those two. Honestly, if I had looked over and heard one of them muttering about how unfair life was, I don't think anyone would have blamed him. Instead, as the night dragged on and the prison settled into its usual chorus of groans, coughs, and rattling chains, they started praying.

Then they started singing.

At first I thought perhaps the beating had affected their judgment. Nobody sings in prison. Nobody worships after getting flogged. Nobody praises God while sitting in pain on a cold stone floor with their feet locked in place. Yet there they were, singing as though they were seated at a feast instead of chained in a dungeon. The sound echoed off the walls and drifted through the darkness. The strange thing was that nobody told them to stop. Usually if someone starts making noise in prison, somebody else threatens to help him stop. But these men sang with such conviction that one by one the conversations died away. Before long, every prisoner was listening.

I was listening too.

I don't remember every word they sang. I just remember wondering what kind of God could inspire that kind of faith. If their God was so powerful, why were they sitting in prison? If their God loved them so much, why were their backs bleeding? If their God was really in control, why hadn't He stopped any of this from happening? The whole thing made no sense. Yet the more they sang, the more I found myself wanting to understand what they knew that I didn't.

Then the ground moved.

At first it was subtle enough that I wondered if I had imagined it. Then the entire prison began shaking. The walls groaned. Dust poured from the ceiling. Chains rattled so violently they sounded like a thousand bells. Men shouted. Some screamed. The earth beneath us rolled and bucked as though an invisible giant had grabbed the prison and decided to see what would happen if he shook it. I threw my hands over my head and braced for the roof to collapse.

Then suddenly it stopped.

And that was when I realized every door in the prison was standing open.

Every single one.

The chains that had held us were hanging loose.

Every single one.

For a moment nobody moved. Now if you've never been a prisoner, you might think that sounds impossible. You would expect a stampede. You would expect men tripping over one another in a desperate rush for freedom. The doors were open. The chains were gone. Escape was right there. Yet somehow, in that moment, every one of us knew we were witnessing something far bigger than an opportunity to run.

The jailer came rushing in carrying a torch. The second he saw the doors open, I watched the color drain from his face. He knew exactly what Rome would do to him if the prisoners had escaped. Without hesitation he drew his sword. Better to die by his own hand than suffer the punishment waiting for him. I thought this was how the night would end.

Then one of the singing men shouted from the darkness.

"Do not harm yourself, for we are all here."

We are all here.

Even now I can still hear those words.

The doors were open.

The chains were gone.

Freedom was standing right there.

And the man who had every reason to run stayed behind to save the life of the man who had locked him up.

That made even less sense than the singing.

The jailer dropped his sword. His hands shook so badly I thought he might collapse. He fell before the two men and asked a question that somehow seemed to silence the entire prison.

"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"

The answer came back immediately.

"Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved."

Believe.

That was it.

No impossible task. No mountain to climb. No years of trying to earn God's favor. No list of achievements required before He would accept you.

Believe.

As I sat there in the darkness listening, I realized something that had never occurred to me before. I had spent years thinking chains were the worst thing a man could carry. But there are chains made of things far heavier than iron. Chains of guilt. Chains of fear. Chains of anger. Chains of shame. Chains of sin. And somehow the freest men in that prison were the two who had arrived there in chains.

The earthquake had broken the iron around their feet, but it hadn't given them their freedom. They already had that before they ever entered the prison. That freedom came from the Jesus they sang about. The Jesus they prayed to. The Jesus they trusted when everything around them said they should despair.

And as I watched the jailer kneeling there, and as I listened to those men speak about salvation, I began to wonder if maybe the greatest miracle that night wasn't the earthquake at all.

Maybe the greatest miracle was that in a prison full of chained men, God showed us what true freedom actually looks like. The Farmer Girl

06/29/2026

The Farmer Girl: One of the questions people have debated for centuries is what kind of fruit Adam and Eve actually ate in the Garden of Eden. Was it an apple? Probably not. The Bible never says it was an apple. That idea mostly came much later through artwork and tradition. Genesis simply calls it "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." That's it. No fruit description. No color. No taste. No helpful footnote from Moses saying, "By the way, it was definitely a pomegranate." Over the years people have suggested just about everything. Some Jewish traditions suggested a fig because Adam and Eve later used fig leaves to cover themselves. Others suggested grapes because of their connection to wisdom and also poor decision-making, which, if you've ever watched humanity for more than five minutes, seems at least somewhat plausible. Others suggested a pomegranate, an etrog, wheat, or even that it was a completely unique tree that existed only in Eden and nowhere else. Thousands of years later, people are still trying to identify the fruit.
And honestly, I think we may be asking the wrong question.
Because the Bible spends almost no time talking about what the fruit was and a tremendous amount of time talking about what happened after it was eaten. Scripture gives us almost no details about the appearance of the fruit, the flavor of the fruit, or even the species of the tree. Instead, the focus immediately shifts to God's command, humanity's decision, and the consequences that followed. In other words, the story was never really about fruit.
Let's be real. If God had said, "You may eat from every tree in the Garden except that one over there because it contains the last slice of pizza," humanity would still be having the same problem. If God had said, "Don't touch that brownie," we would have touched the brownie. If God had said, "Everything in the Garden is yours except that one chocolate chip cookie," there would be crumbs. Somewhere in Genesis 3 there would be Adam standing there trying to explain why there are chocolate smudges around his mouth while insisting he has absolutely no idea what happened. The issue was never apples versus pomegranates versus figs. The issue was trust.
Think about what Adam and Eve actually had. They lived in a perfect world. No death. No disease. No broken relationships. No pain. No anxiety. No funerals. No taxes. No alarm clocks. No spam calls about your vehicle's extended warranty. No group texts where someone hits "reply all." No mosquitoes. Paradise. They were surrounded by abundance. God had provided everything they needed and far more than they could ever ask for. Yet somehow the serpent convinced them to focus on the one thing they could not have.
And if we're being honest, that sounds an awful lot like us.
God gives us countless blessings, yet we fixate on the one thing we don't have. The prayer that hasn't been answered. The door that didn't open. The circumstance we wish were different. The opportunity someone else received. The thing we think would finally make us happy if only God would hand it over. Adam and Eve stood in the middle of perfection and focused on the one restriction. We often stand in the middle of blessings and do exactly the same thing.
What fascinates me is that the tree itself may not have been remarkable at all. Maybe it was beautiful. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe the fruit was delicious. Maybe it tasted like slightly disappointing kale. Scripture doesn't tell us because apparently God knew people would spend the next several thousand years arguing about the fruit instead of paying attention to the point. We know far more about the conversation that happened beside the tree than we do about the tree itself. That should probably tell us where God intended our attention to be.
The point was that God had given humanity a choice. Would they trust Him? Would they believe He was good? Would they accept that maybe, just maybe, the Creator knew more than the creation? The fruit wasn't really the test. Trust was. The tree simply provided the opportunity to exercise it.
And honestly, I think that is why Genesis still feels so relevant today. Because every day we face the same question Adam and Eve faced. Will we trust God's definition of good and evil? Will we trust His timing? Will we trust His wisdom when we don't understand what He is doing? Or will we decide we would rather determine those things for ourselves? The details may look different, but the underlying question has not changed much in several thousand years.
The funny thing is that after all the debates, all the theories, all the discussions about whether it was an apple, a fig, a grape, a pomegranate, wheat, an etrog, or some completely unique fruit that no longer exists, I still don't know what kind of fruit grew on that tree.
But I know exactly what grew from eating it.
And that is the part of the story God wanted us to notice.

06/26/2026

If God knew Adam and Eve were going to eat the fruit, why put the tree in the Garden at all?

It's a fair question, and honestly, it is one of those questions that tends to linger in the back of your mind because on the surface it seems so simple. If God knew exactly what was going to happen, why not just remove the problem before it ever started? No tree. No temptation. No serpent. No fall. No sin. No death. No heartbreak. No funerals. No wars. No moments where you walk into a room and completely forget why you went in there. Problem solved. If God is all-knowing, surely He knew where this story was headed. So why place the tree there in the first place?

Except I don't think the story was ever really about the tree.

Imagine for a moment that someone builds a robot. Not one of those slightly terrifying science fiction robots that eventually decides humanity is inefficient and needs to be reorganized. Just a robot programmed to tell you every morning that you're wonderful. It says all the right things. It agrees with everything you say. It obeys every command. It never argues. Never disagrees. Never leaves. Never disappoints you. Every single day it tells you how much it loves you.

Would it actually love you?

Not really.

It couldn't.

The words might sound convincing, but they would be meaningless because they weren't chosen. They were programmed. The thing that makes love valuable is that it can be rejected. The thing that makes trust meaningful is that distrust is possible. The thing that makes loyalty beautiful is that betrayal exists. If there is no alternative, there is no real choice, and if there is no real choice, then love becomes nothing more than a script being followed.

When God created Adam and Eve, He didn't create robots. He didn't create puppets. He didn't create creatures programmed to endlessly nod their heads and say, "Yes, Lord," because they had no other option. He created people made in His image. People capable of thinking. People capable of creating. People capable of relationship. People capable of love. And perhaps most importantly, people capable of choosing.

And for a choice to be real, there must be another option.

Genesis tells us that God placed Adam and Eve in a Garden overflowing with abundance. That part often gets overlooked because we tend to zoom in on the one forbidden tree and act as though that was the entire Garden. But imagine what Eden must have been like. Every need met. Every tree beautiful. Every fruit good. No disease. No death. No fear. No broken relationships. No anxiety. No pain. No sorrow. God essentially handed humanity a paradise and said yes to almost everything in it. The Garden was not primarily a story about restriction. It was a story about overwhelming generosity.

Yet somehow the enemy managed to convince Adam and Eve that the one thing God withheld mattered more than everything He had already given them.

And if we're being honest, that sounds uncomfortably familiar.

How often do we do exactly the same thing? God gives us blessings we couldn't possibly count. He gives us family, friendships, food, purpose, laughter, forgiveness, salvation, sunrises, sunsets, and countless evidences of His goodness. Yet somehow our eyes drift toward the one thing we don't have. The prayer that hasn't been answered. The door that didn't open. The dream that didn't happen. The relationship that didn't work out. The thing we wish God would change. Like Adam and Eve, we can find ourselves standing in the middle of abundance while staring at the one thing beyond our reach.

But here's the part that really gets me.

The tree wasn't proof that God was withholding something good.

The tree was proof that love was real.

Every day Adam and Eve walked past that tree, they had an opportunity to trust. Every day they could choose to believe that God knew more than they did. Every day they could decide whether they believed His heart was good. The tree wasn't simply about obedience. It was about relationship. It was about trust. Because trust only exists when there is another option available. If you knew every answer, it wouldn't be trust. If you had complete certainty, it wouldn't be faith. If there were no possibility of saying no, then yes would lose all meaning.

What amazes me even more is that God knew exactly what would happen.

He knew the fruit would be eaten.

He knew sin would enter the world.

He knew there would be heartbreak and betrayal and suffering. He knew there would be wars. He knew there would be funerals. He knew there would be hospital rooms and cemeteries and tears shed into pillows in the middle of the night. He knew there would be moments when people would shake their fists toward Heaven and ask where He was. He knew every terrible consequence that would follow humanity's decision.

And He created us anyway.

Not because He wanted servants who had no choice.

Not because He wanted robots who could only obey.

But because He wanted sons and daughters who could genuinely love Him.

Think about that for a moment. Before Adam ever took a bite, God already knew the price He Himself would pay. Before humanity ever rebelled, God already knew redemption would be necessary. Before there was a tree in the Garden, there would eventually be a cross on a hill. Before there was sin, there was already a plan for salvation.

That means the story of Scripture is not primarily about human failure.

It's about divine love.

A love so great that God created people knowing they would reject Him. A love so great that He gave them freedom knowing exactly what it would cost. A love so great that when humanity chose the tree, He chose the cross.

And maybe that's why the tree had to be there.

Because without the possibility of rejection, love becomes programming.

Without the possibility of rebellion, obedience loses its meaning.

Without the possibility of saying no, yes loses its value.

The tree in the Garden was never evidence that God was cruel. It was evidence that He loved us enough to give us a choice. And the cross was evidence that when we made the wrong one, He loved us enough to come after us anyway.

When I read the story of Eden, I don't see a God looking for a reason to punish people. I see a God willing to risk heartbreak for the sake of relationship. I see a God who wanted real love, not forced love. I see a God who knew exactly where the story would lead and chose to create us anyway.

And honestly, that may be one of the most incredible things in the entire Bible.

The tree tells us we were free to choose.

The cross tells us we were worth rescuing. The Farmer Girl