We’ve all felt the temptation, after someone has been called out for sin, to just leave them there and be done with it. But in 2 Corinthians 2, Paul tells the Corinthians this punishment is enough—now they need to forgive and comfort the one they punished.
Most of us know what it feels like to wonder whether God has just lost interest—whether we’ve messed up too much, waited too long, or ended up too far gone for him to still be working. The prophet Isaiah delivered God’s word to people who felt exactly that way, and what he told them in passages like Isaiah 7 and 9 raises a question worth sitting with: does “God with us” still hold when everything around you says otherwise?
You ever felt the walls enclosing around you, a dark place you never invited in and would never have chosen? Jeremiah knew that feeling in Lamentations 3, where he says the Lord Himself led him into darkness, not into the light. How could we be thankful for a place like that?
After seventy years in Babylon, Israel’s exiles crossed the threshold of Jerusalem expecting home to feel like home again. But in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai, even a restored temple and rebuilt walls cannot keep old priorities and old sins from returning. What do you hold on to when the future you hoped for cannot heal what exile exposed?
This Week at Little Hills returns as Pastor Tim takes us to the book of Jude and thinks about what it means to live as those with hope.
There are mornings when the life beyond your window looks nothing like the one you expected—and no quick return is on the horizon. Jeremiah 2 and 29 press into exile’s hardest questions: what carried a people’s hearts away from home, what faithfulness looks like in an unwanted place, and whether those who have wandered too far can still call on God.
As daylight fades earlier each evening, familiar rooms become harder to navigate—and life can darken just as predictably. In 2 Corinthians 1:7–11, Paul refuses to minimize an affliction so crushing that he despaired of life itself. His words confront the question that surfaces when relief does not come: where can hope rest when personal strength is gone?
When things feel overwhelming, you reach for comfort food—a buttery potato, a square of chocolate—knowing none of it will fix the job or the diagnosis. In 2 Corinthians 1:3–6, Paul calls God “the God of all comfort” while placing that comfort squarely in the midst of affliction, not beyond it. When God does not remove the pain, could comfort be arriving in a form you did not expect?
When repeated failure makes a person look like a lost cause, writing them off can feel less like cruelty than common sense. Yet Paul opens 2 Corinthians 1 by addressing a fractured, correction-resistant congregation as “the church of God” and “saints”—then speaking grace and peace over people who appear to deserve neither.
If we’re all fools, what’s it matter if one fool hurts another? Does anything matter? To God, the answer is it does — and not all fools are alike because of Him.