Articles by Marty Kessler

1. Give your sadness time – While pain resulting from an injury (either physical or emotional) is usually the greatest at first, the process of healing begins almost immediately. It is a process, however, and cannot be rushed. Give yourself permission to hurt for a while and allow the hurt to subside. Even Jobs three “friends” sat quietly with him for seven days , saying nothing (Job 2:11-13). 2. ...

Live streaming! Who would have thought 20+ years ago that the Lord’s people while physically separated could stay in touch with worship & Bible classes through the internet? I have thanked God many times for this technology. Circumstances have often dictated temporary interruptions. Snow, ice, hail storms, tornadoes, power-outages, etc. have all proven to be good reasons to cancel or postpone asse...

Well, of course we know what must be done to get a baby, right? This alone shows us that it is not by means of our genius that these little blessings come into being. The physical body of a baby is a miraculous sort of thing. You have a nearly microscopic egg that is fertilized by a single microscopic sperm and voila, you have all the makings of a tiny person, and in nine months or so, there he is...

As Israel was freed from Egyptian slavery, so all who have obeyed the gospel of Jesus Christ have been freed from sin! But the Israelites were not happy campers. Regardless of God’s profound care for them, they seemed determined to find reasons to complain. Pharaoh’s gonna get us! Thirst is gonna get us! Hunger’s gonna get us! The giants are gonna get us! Something’s gonna get us! We’re all going ...

Solomon was the wise king of Israel who brought his nation to its zenith of power and prosperity. He did so, however, by overtaxing his people. When Solomon died, his son Rehoboam took the throne. The new king was immediately approached by one of his father’s former servants as well as representatives of the entire nation. They promised faithful service to Rehoboam if he would only lighten the hea...

By now, you probably know that COVID-19 can give you headaches, upset stomach, difficulty breathing, body aches, fever, impact your ability to taste and smell and a variety of other such symptoms (including death) that seem to vary from one victim to another. As if the above were not bad enough, I have seen that this malady can now boast what I believe to be even more tragic secondary side-effects...

Nothing in the New Testament leads us to observe the Sabbath. What we see beginning in the gospels and continuing in the rest of the New Testament is a break from the Sabbath with a new emphasis on the first day of the week. Each gospel writer carefully points out that Jesus’ resurrection was on the first of the week, Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:1-2, Luke 24:1 & John 20:1. Why did the Holy Spirit inspir...

Judah’s citizens had practiced 57 years of apostasy and idolatry when Josiah became king… and he was just eight years old! But he would set his heart to follow God. When Josiah was 20, he began a purge of the idolatrous images and high places. Then at age 26, he sent workmen to repair the neglected temple in Jerusalem. Somehow during this project, a priest came across a copy of the Law of Moses. W...

“And Jesus said unto them, ‘Go forth and nit-pick’”, from the book of 1st Darkened Imaginations 13:13. Right. Nit pickers are everywhere, taking great pride in pointing out all that is wrong with the world. They can see a flaw from a mile away… in the dark. Finding fault is the lowest of human skills. The last thing I need is some self-assigned critic pointing out the woes of our existence at ever...

Perhaps you know him by the German name “Wenceslas”? He reigned as monarch in Bohemia from 922-929 and was so known for his benevolent nature that he became the patron saint of the Czech people. Mr. J.M. Neale (1818-1866) wrote a song that purports to recount one of Vaclav’s many acts of kindness. The song has long inspired me as to the beauty of those given power being influenced by the love of G...

Have you ever had to make decisions that would be considered acceptable to a few hundred people (keep reading)? This year’s circumstances have prompted your shepherds to meet on several occasions and hash out decisions we never thought we would have to make. It is one thing to cancel worship assemblies & Bible classes for ice, snow, tornaders and the like when the safety of the flock was an obviou...

About a week ago as I write this, terrorists violently beheaded three Christian men in the Indonesian village of Lemban Tongoa and burned another man and his son alive in their house. In Nigeria, West Africa, a minister & two Christian women were recently kidnapped by terrorists. Their condition and whereabouts are presently unknown. A mob of around 2,000 Hindus attacked and beat 80 people in the ...

Are you one of those “silly” maskers, or a crazed “conspiracy theorist” non-masker? Do you believe in science? Well, duh, everybody believes in science, right? But which of the multiple, mutually opposed scientific statements do you espouse about Covid? Herd immunity science? Chinese genocide science? Leftist agenda science? Vaccine research science? Medical community science? Wait, which medical ...

Literally hours before this photo was taken, this entire rose bush and each individual bloom was laying flat on the ground, not only covered, but encased in ice from a recent storm. Have you ever looked closely at a rose? Have you noted the wonderful delicacy of each silky petal? What a marvel to me that such a fragile living thing could be held in ice, but afterwards be so perfectly and completel...

If you know me, you know I don’t believe in dress codes for the church…… buuuut the subject of what we wear in public is not quite so simple as to be dismissed in the name of being against a dress code. Judging from passages that mention it (1st Timothy 2:9 & 1st Peter 3:3 for example), modesty in the first century and before seemed to be a matter of avoiding ostentation, that is the wearing or di...

I love it. Line in the water, just waiting for the first stirring of a nibble. Then “BOOM!”, they bite hard, you set the hook and feel that life on the other end of the line as you reel him in. There is just nothing else like that kind of excitement. Remember that time the apostles had fished all night and caught nothing (Luke 5:1-11)? Jesus told them to go out into the deep and let down their net...

The United States of America is not the church. We understand that, right? But is it wrong to love and honor America as our nation? “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive co...

The above is a question asked by Pontius Pilate after Jesus told him that he had come to testify to the truth (John 18:33-38). There he stood, the man “in power”, not realizing he was speaking with his own creator and Lord of all. He could never have encountered a more suitable authority for answering his question. Apparently, however, he did not ask in order to receive an answer. Reality is truth...

Dear Brethren, the City of Choctaw has mandated that masks be worn from September 6th through October 6th of this year. Here are a few particulars from the City’s document itself, Ordinance 830-2020. Actual quotes are underlined: Section B. Definitions, paragraph #1 – “Face Covering” means a covering that fully covers a person’s nose and mouth. The term “Face Covering” includes, but is not limited...

I was just reading about the church in Ephesus (Revelation 2:7). They had problems with some guys there who were false apostles and liars. I wonder what kind of trouble that caused, especially among the weaker members of the church. There were also people there called “Nicolaitans” whose behavior was so bad that God said he hated it. Jesus warned the church in Smyrna (Revelation 2:8) that some of ...