All Articles For Dick, Mitchell C.

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. According to Scripture’s log, only believers boat. The rest, the wicked, are lost at sea. In fact, the wicked are not only lost at sea. They are the sea, or at least quite similar, spiritually speaking. What sea are sinners like? They are like a big sea, and a deep. For the entire human race is lost; a vast sea of unholy nations. And the sin-lostness is as deep as the great Mariana Trench; as deep as the deceitful heart (Jer. 17:9). As well, this sea of nations...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan.

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Bodies bodies everywhere. What’s a body to think? God has made them. He has made the universe full of bodies, and He has put us smack dab in the middle of them. And He has even given glorious bodies for us to think about. There is a glory of the sun, of the moon, and of yon feline. Think about it. And thank God for such glories. It is all created—the size, the brightness, the power, and yes, the curves, to show something of the great and glorious and bodiless...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Previous article in this series: October 1, 2005, p. 14. Grace Life believer…you are a saint! This is true because God in heaven and in His Word, the Bible, says so. He says in the Bible that all believers are saints. In fact, God says it a lot there. I wonder why we seem loath to say it here, on earth? Here, as in, in the halls of Covenant Christian High School? As you gather for the Faith singles Bible Study? Or as we talk around a cup of tea in my...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. In several inspired epistles the apostle Paul is moved to address folks, even whole congregations, as “saints.” He does that, for example, in I Corinthians. There it is, I Corinthians 1:1-3: “Paul … unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called…saints.” Now this title “saints” we should ponder presently. Ponder for grace life. Maybe not for the church’s canonization of you, or dogs being named after you, or for folks seeking your help from heaven. But for Father furthering...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Previous article in this series: March 1, 2005, p. 252. In the elegant books of creation we read, through the spectacles of Scripture, of sin and grace. We read some tsunami books in our last Grace Life article. Those terrible killer waves that crashed coasts some months ago are not only lessons in earthquakes and “where to build your next resort.” They are spiritual books. They are God’s own literature of the “shock and awe” genre. They shock us into an awesome sense of sin and sin’s killer...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan.   Certain Tsunamis…   Tsunami” is the odd word many folks first learned about a month ago when big tidal waves, tsunamis, struck the shores of many a land fringing the Indian Ocean and beyond. These tsunamis, spawned from an earthquake some six miles below the Indian Ocean in the area of Indonesia, brought great destruction, as you know. Upwards of 250,000 bodies have or will have been counted or counted missing, either swept out to sea by or smashed against the flotsam and jetsam of the killing,...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. A little late, I realize, for “New Year” reflections. Especially for you Grace Life readers who read this some time in February. By now we might have broken fifty-three resolutions. And maybe we are thinking already of spring. Bear with me…. Imagine you are with me as I write this, and it is New Year’s Eve, and you are not particularly interested that some ball is going to drop, but you might be a bit concerned that some bomb will soon drop, and you are looking ahead and...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. (Preceding article in this series: August 2004, p. 449.) The 2004 Athens Olympic Games are over. The athletes came and conquered or were conquered. Spectators came and saw, booed, applauded, mashed a marathoner, and went home, or went to jail. Here in Grace Life we want to linger in Athens a little while longer. For we are wrestling with a question. It is a question that will not go away. It is a question from which we must not fly. The question has to do not just with...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? This is the question theologians put when considering the matter of how the Church, Jerusalem, is related and relates to the world, Athens. Put another way, the question is How is the Church, and how are the people of God in that Church a part of or not a part of the culture of a fallen world? And if by “culture” is meant “the ideas, customs, skills, arts, etc. of a given people in a given period; civilization” (New World Dictionary),...