Devotionals by Chaplain (Col) Stephen W. Leonard, USA, Ret.
Rest in Peace
“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 1:2 “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1 “Requiescat in pace” is the oft-expressed Latin phrase for the familiar “RIP” used in »
Hide and Seek
“Anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame. Romans 10:11 When my oldest daughter was two years old, she and I were playing hide-and-seek in the walled backyard of our home in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was her turn to hide, and she couldn’t find a hiding place »
God Is Simply God
“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come »
Is It That Important?
Jesus asked, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed, and walk’? Mark 2:9 In this life, some people are the prisoners of physical maladies such as blindness, deafness, crippled limbs, incapacitating mental syndromes, debilitating, and even lethal »
The Interminable Wail
“Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of Him. Even so. Amen.” Revelation 1:7 Bad habits often linger. I have a terrible habit of sometimes spontaneously letting out a »
The Temptation of Money Over Character
“While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, ‘Tell people, “His disciples »
Glory In The Ordinary
“He had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed »
Many Pigs, One Man
“Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.” Luke 8:33 This episode is undoubtedly a peculiar tale. A quite deranged man met Jesus directly as He got out of a boat with His »
PARAKLETOS
“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.” John »
INVIGORATING HOPE
“For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:24-25 The most depressed and lonely among us have »
CHANGE OF PLANS?
“But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the LORD, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Acts 9:1-2 »
“Nothing!” Really?
“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…” 1 Corinthians 15:52, Luke 16:19-31, and Luke 23:43 Take one final breath, and no more air fills your lungs. What then? What is the next thought, next sight, next feeling, if there is one, or is there just nothing? With no »
