YESHVA Articles
Articles
Long-form reads for the Christian life, in English and Spanish.
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Jochebed and the Basket: The Parent Who Prepares and Lets Go
She hid her baby for three months, then built him a tiny boat and set it on the Nile. What Moses' mother teaches parents about doing everything you can and then trusting God with the rest.
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The Emmaus Road: When the Risen Jesus Let Two Grieving Friends Talk First
Two disciples left Jerusalem on Easter Sunday with their hope in the past tense, and a stranger fell into step beside them. Before he explained anything, he asked a question and let them tell the whole sad story.
The Emperor's Letter That Dates the Apostle Paul
Neither Acts nor Paul's letters mention a single calendar year. So how do we know when Paul was in Corinth? The answer lies in a few broken stones at Delphi, carved with a letter from Claudius about a town that needed more citizens.
Jacob's Coat: What Joseph's Family Teaches About Favoritism
A colorful robe did not ruin Joseph's family by itself. A pattern passed down through three generations did, and most parents recognize a little of it. Here is what the story says about siblings, fairness and how homes get repaired.
Ruth in the Barley Field: The Small Provision in Your Hands
Two poor widows, a harvest, and a landowner who left extra grain on the ground. Ruth's first day in Bethlehem shows how hope often arrives: not as a rescue, but as a bag of barley and a kind word.
Fanny Crosby and the Eight Thousand Hymns She Never Saw
Blind from six weeks old, Fanny Crosby wrote some eight thousand hymns, often for a dollar or two and often under a pen name. Her story is less about suffering than about a grandmother, a memorized Bible and steady, unglamorous work.
The Credit-Card-Sized Scrap of John in Manchester
In a library in northern England lies a scrap of papyrus you could cover with your palm. It carries a few Greek lines from the trial of Jesus, and for ninety years it has been at the center of the question of how early the Gospels were copied and how far they had already traveled.
Just the Two of You: Jesus's First Step When Someone Wrongs You
When someone wrongs us, we tend to explode or go silent. In Matthew 18 Jesus lays out a third way, and its first step is small and private: go and talk, just the two of you. How that works in friendships, families and marriages, and when it is the wrong tool.
Honor Your Father and Mother: The Commandment for Adults Caring for Aging Parents
We teach this commandment to children, but it was first spoken to grown men and women. For the tens of millions of adults now caring for an aging parent, it may be the most practical commandment of all.
Even John the Baptist Doubted: What Jesus Did With a Prisoner's Question
The man who pointed at Jesus and named him God's Lamb later sat in a cell and sent friends to ask if he had it right. What Jesus said back is the kindest answer to doubt in the Gospels.
Naaman and the River He Thought Was Beneath Him
A decorated general arrives with silver, gold and a royal letter, and the prophet won't even come to the door. The story of Naaman asks a question worth sitting with: what if the help you need comes in a form too plain to respect?
The Book Under Dostoevsky's Pillow: How a New Testament Given in Siberia Shaped His Great Novels
Minutes from a firing squad, Fyodor Dostoevsky was spared by a staged pardon and sent to a Siberian prison camp. On the way, a woman handed him a New Testament. He kept it for the rest of his life, and you can find its fingerprints on every great novel he wrote.
Talitha Koum: The Aramaic Words the Gospels Refused to Translate
The Gospels were written in Greek, but at a few unforgettable moments they keep the Aramaic Jesus actually spoke. Those words appear at a child's bedside, in a garden at night, on the cross and at an empty tomb, and they let us hear the sound of his voice.
Friends Twenty Years Apart: What Moses and Joshua, Elizabeth and Mary Knew
When Moses left the tent where he met with God, his young aide Joshua stayed behind. When Mary received news she could not explain, she went to an older relative. Some of Scripture's most important friendships cross a gap of decades, and most of us have almost none.
The Lois Effect: How Grandparents Pass Faith to the Next Generation
When Paul thought about young Timothy's faith, he traced it back two generations, to a grandmother named Lois. Grandparents rarely get the credit, but research and Scripture agree that their quiet influence can shape a grandchild's faith for life.
Habakkuk: The Prophet Who Argued with God and Stayed to Listen
Habakkuk asks God how long he will ignore injustice, gets an answer that makes things worse, and pushes back a second time. Then he climbs to his watchpost and waits. The book ends with a song written for the temple musicians.
When He Said Her Name: Mary Magdalene at the Empty Tomb
Mary Magdalene came to the tomb before sunrise, stayed after the others went home, and looked straight at the risen Jesus without recognizing him. What opened her eyes was not an argument or a vision. It was her own name.
Be Thou My Vision: An Irish Prayer Older Than Its Tune
The hymn many people sing at weddings and funerals began as a medieval Irish prayer for protection, passed through a scholar's plain prose and a poet's verse, and only found its famous tune in 1919. Its path from a monastery to a modern hymnal is a story of patient translators.
No Innkeeper, No Barn: The Bethlehem House Behind Luke 2
The Christmas pageant has an innkeeper and a stable, but Luke's account has neither. A single Greek word, and the layout of an ordinary village house, paint a warmer and more surprising picture of the night Jesus was born.
First Dates That Let You Actually Meet Someone
Dinner and a movie is the classic first date, and it may be one of the worst ways to get to know a person: two hours of sitting silently in the dark, after an hour of performing for each other. Here are better ideas, and why they work.
Fathers, Do Not Exasperate: What Paul Asked of Roman Dads
In a world where a father held nearly unchecked power, Paul spoke to the children first, then told the men to hold back. What that short passage asked of Roman households still asks of every parent.
Daniel's Three Times a Day: A Prayer Habit for an Ordinary Tuesday
When a decree made prayer illegal, Daniel did what he had always done. The lions' den did not create his habit; it revealed it. Here is a realistic three-anchor pattern for a working day, drawn from a very old rhythm.
Martha, Martha: The Kitchen, the Guest and the One Thing
Martha did everything right: she opened her home to Jesus and set out to feed him well. Then he said her name twice. Slow down with the most misread kitchen scene in the Gospels, and find out what he was actually asking of her.
The "New City" Outside Caesarea: How a Famine and a Bishop Gave the World the Hospital
In the fourth century, a bishop named Basil answered a famine with a soup kitchen, then built something no one had seen before: free beds, doctors and care for anyone who needed them, including people with leprosy whom everyone else had cast out.
Lydia, the Dealer in Purple, and the First Church in Philippi
A businesswoman from Thyatira, far from home, sat by a river in Philippi and heard Paul. What she did next put the first European church in her living room.
Faithful Wounds: How to Tell a Friend the Truth, and How to Hear It
Flattery is easy and costs nothing. Honest correction costs the one who speaks, which is exactly why Proverbs calls a friend's wounds trustworthy. How to say a hard thing well, and how to become someone people can say it to.
Family Devotions That Actually Happen: Ten Minutes, Tied to Dinner or Bedtime
Moses never told parents to run a Bible class. He told them to talk about God's words at the table, on the road, at bedtime and in the morning. That smaller, more ordinary picture is the one most guilty Christian parents can actually live.
The Hand She Could Not Lift: Corrie ten Boom and What Forgiveness Is, and Is Not
She had just finished speaking about God's forgiveness when a former guard from the camp where her sister died walked up and held out his hand. Corrie ten Boom's honest account of that moment is one of the clearest pictures we have of how forgiveness actually works.
Hannah at Shiloh: The Silent Prayer a Priest Mistook for Drunkenness
Hannah prayed so hard, and so quietly, that the priest on duty decided she was drunk. How she answered him, and what she did before anything had changed, shows what to do with a longing God has not yet answered.
Bach's Bible: The Pencil Notes That Show Why He Signed Every Score to God's Glory
A pastor visiting his cousin in a Michigan farmhouse in 1934 noticed a signature on the title page of an old German Bible. It was Johann Sebastian Bach's, and the notes in its margins say what he thought music was for.