'The Blank Check'

Solomon became king of Israel while he was still a very young man, stepping into the shoes of his father David — who was, by every measure, a legend. Solomon hadn't built anything yet. He hadn't proven anything yet. One night, at a place called Gibeon, God appeared to him in a

Read More
Rev. Jonathan Beck
'Not a Wild Tree'

Near the very beginning of the Bible, in the second chapter of Genesis, God plants a garden and puts a tree of life at its center, fed by a river that flows out to water the whole earth. It's the first picture Scripture ever gives us of a flourishing world — and notice the word: planted. Not a

Read More
Rev. Jonathan Beck
'The Line You Stop Seeing'

In 2003, a nineteen-year-old named Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford to found a company called Theranos, built on a genuinely good idea: cheap, simple blood testing that could catch disease early and save lives. She didn’t sit down on day one and decide to defraud

Read More
Rev. Jonathan Beck
'You Don't Have One Problem. You Have Three.'

At a dinner party a few months ago, a man made a joke at someone else’s expense — the kind that gets a laugh from the table by embarrassing someone else. He knew, before it even left his mouth, how it would land. He said it anyway, because the laugh in that second mattered more

Read More
Rev. Jonathan Beck
'Ignoring the Risk'

The ship should never have left port. Paul was a prisoner being transported to Rome on a massive grain freighter — a working, run-of-the-mill Mediterranean cargo vessel, not some exotic vessel,

Read More
Rev. Jonathan Beck
'Ask Them Yourself'

A man is on trial for his life, standing in front of a king who could end the case with a single word. He doesn't beg. He doesn't try to win people over emotionally. He does something almost nobody facing execution does — he hands over evidence, and dares anyone listening to go

Read More
Rev. Jonathan Beck