Shows / Letters From Home
Letters From Home
We're all a long way from home.
That's the thing the Bible keeps trying to tell us. We're sojourners. Pilgrims. People walking a road we can't see the end of. And the whole canon of Scripture — Moses, the prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, Paul writing from a Roman prison — is mail for people still on the road. Sent by a Father who has not forgotten where we belong.
Letters from Home is a daily Bible teaching podcast with host Hank Garner. Each weekday, we open one letter and read it slow…
Episodes
Letters From HomeSeason Two Trailer — Mail from the Far Country
The whole show is built on one idea. The Bible is mail. Not a rulebook, not a textbook, not a museum you walk through quietly. Mail. Letters from a Father to…
Letters From HomeLetter 050 — The Whole Letter: Skēnē (Revelation 21 + Season One)
The Greek word at the heart of Revelation 21:3 is the same root word John used in his Gospel for the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The tent that has…
Letters From HomeLetter 049 — The Address: The Goal Is Not Escape (Revelation 21)
Most of us have been taught that heaven is where we go. The Bible says heaven is what comes here. The destination is not escape. The destination is renewal. In…
Letters From HomeLetter 048 — The Story: The Tabernacle of God With Men (Revelation 21)
A new heaven. A new earth. A city coming down. A voice from the throne. A hand wiping tears. We walk the vision. In this letter - Verses 1-8 walked slow - The…
Letters From HomeLetter 045 — The Whole Letter: Hupernikao (Romans 8)
The phrase more than conquerors translates one Greek word Paul may have invented. Hupernikao. Over-conquerors. Today we sit with the word, and the thunder at…
Letters From HomeLetter 047 — The Sender: An Old Apostle on Patmos (Revelation 21)
An old man on a prison island. Exiled by Rome for refusing to stop talking about Jesus. Given the longest, strangest, most beautiful vision in the New…
Letters From HomeLetter 046 — The Envelope: Home (Revelation 21)
The destination. The vision John saw on Patmos when he was an old man. After ten weeks of letters from home, this week we sit with where the road ends. In this…
Letters From HomeLetter 044 — The Address: Do You Believe Verse One? (Romans 8)
Paul says there is no condemnation. Most of us live as if there is. Today we ask what voice we are still listening to, and whether it is the Spirit of…
Letters From HomeLetter 043 — The Story: The Spirit Who Groans (Romans 8)
Romans 8 has no characters and no narrative. The story is the structure. From no condemnation to no separation, with the Spirit of adoption crying Abba in us…
Letters From HomeLetter 042 — The Sender: Paul at the Apex (Romans 8)
Paul wrote thirteen letters. Romans is the longest and most carefully built. Romans 8 is the apex. And he wrote it from the other side of twenty-five years of…
Letters From HomeLetter 041 — The Envelope: No Condemnation to No Separation (Romans 8)
One of the most beloved chapters in the Bible. Paul at his theological and pastoral peak. Begins with no condemnation. Ends with nothing can separate us. Today…
Letters From HomeLetter 040 — The Whole Letter: Goel (Ruth + Matthew 1)
The Hebrew word that runs through Ruth twenty-one times is the same word the New Testament reaches for when it describes what Christ has done. Goel…
Letters From HomeLetter 039 — The Address: Orpah or Ruth (Ruth 1)
Three women on a dirt road. Each had to choose. Most of us would have done what Orpah did. The book is asking which one we will be. In this letter - Why Orpah…
Letters From HomeLetter 038 — The Story: A Threshing Floor, a City Gate, a Baby (Ruth)
A foreign widow gleans in the field of a kinsman. A midnight scene on a threshing floor. A redemption at the city gate. A baby in the arms of a grandmother who…
Letters From HomeLetter 037 — The Sender: The Outsider in the Family Tree (Ruth)
Tradition says Samuel wrote it. The text doesn't name an author. But someone decided a Moabite widow's story needed to be preserved — and the genealogy at the…
Letters From HomeLetter 036 — The Envelope: Where You Go (Ruth 1)
A short book about a foreign widow. Three deaths. A dirt road. A vow no one expected. Where you go, I will go. And the family line of Christ grew out of it. In…
Letters From HomeLetter 035 — The Whole Letter: Logos and the Tabernacle (John 1:1-18)
One Greek verb in verse 14 ties the whole prologue back to a tent in the wilderness. The Word became flesh and pitched a tent. Today we hear the whole letter…
Letters From HomeLetter 034 — The Address: Do You Let Him Be Flesh? (John 1)
Most of us have reduced Jesus to an idea. The prologue insists on the body. The Word became flesh — what difference does that make to how we live? In this…
Letters From HomeLetter 033 — The Story: He Pitched His Tent Among Us (John 1)
The eternal Word who made the cosmos pitched a tent in our streets. Eighteen verses that walk from cosmic geometry to a body you could have touched. In this…
Letters From HomeLetter 032 — The Sender: The Last Apostle Standing (John 1)
John was a fisherman from Galilee. By the time he wrote his Gospel, he was the last apostle alive. And he decided to tell the story one more time. In this…
Letters From HomeLetter 031 — The Envelope: In the Beginning Was the Word (John 1:1-18)
The most cosmic passage in the New Testament. It starts before the world existed and lands in a manger. Eighteen verses that walk from eternity to flesh. In…
Letters From HomeLetter 030 — The Whole Letter: I AM (Exodus 3)
God gives Moses His name at the bush. Four letters in Hebrew. The name His people have carried for three thousand years. Today we sit with the I AM. In this…
Letters From HomeLetter 029 — The Address: Are You Noticing the Bush? (Exodus 3)
God shows up in burning bushes. The question is whether we turn aside. Most of us are too busy to notice. In this letter - What a burning bush looks like in…
Letters From HomeLetter 028 — The Story: I Have Seen, I Have Heard, I Know (Exodus 3)
The bush burns and is not consumed. The voice says Moses's name twice. The verbs change everything — I have seen, I have heard, I know. In this letter -…
Letters From HomeLetter 027 — The Sender: Three Lives, Forty Years Each (Exodus 2-3)
Moses had three lives. One ended at forty. The next ended at eighty. The third was about to start in a wilderness he had stopped expecting anything from. In…
Letters From HomeLetter 026 — The Envelope: The Bush That Wouldn't Burn Up (Exodus 3)
A fugitive shepherd on the back of the desert. A bush that burns and is not consumed. A voice that says his name twice. The day Moses's real life began. In…
- Letters From Home
Letter 025 — The Whole Letter: Splanchnizomai (Luke 15)
The compassion of the father in Luke 15 is not polite. It is gut-level. Visceral. Bowels-deep. One Greek word changes how you read the whole chapter. Today we…
Letters From HomeLetter 024 — The Address: The Brother Who Stayed (Luke 15)
The parable does not end at the party. There is a second son. He stayed. He worked. He kept the rules. And he is also lost. Most of us are him. In this letter…
Letters From HomeLetter 023 — The Story: The Father Who Ran (Luke 15)
A son who effectively wished his father dead. A father who ran through the village to embrace him. A homecoming you've heard a hundred times — slowed down so…
Letters From HomeLetter 022 — The Sender: The Gentile Physician (Luke 15)
Luke was a doctor. A Greek. The only Gentile writer in the New Testament, and the only Gospel writer who gives us the full trilogy of lost-and-found parables…
Letters From HomeLetter 021 — The Envelope: Three Parables, One Father (Luke 15)
The most famous chapter Jesus ever told in story form. But not one parable — three. The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. Told together, escalating, in…
Letters From HomeLetter 020 — The Whole Letter: Chesed Pursues You (Psalm 23)
One Hebrew verb at the end of Psalm 23 changes everything. Goodness and lovingkindness do not follow you. They pursue you. Today we hear the whole letter. In…
Letters From HomeLetter 019 — The Address: Where the Third Person Becomes the Second (Psalm 23)
Most of us do not want to be sheep. But the psalm calls us one anyway. And the valley is where the language has to change. In this letter - Why our culture…
Letters From HomeLetter 018 — The Story: The Lion, the Bear, and the Boy (Psalm 23 + 1 Samuel 17 + John 10)
The future king of Israel killed lions with a stick. The story David told Saul before fighting Goliath is the back-story of Psalm 23, and the New Testament…
Letters From HomeLetter 017 — The Sender: The Shepherd Who Became a King (Psalm 23 + 1 Samuel 16)
David spent his youth in the hills of Bethlehem with sheep. He knew what shepherds did. By the time he wrote Psalm 23, he had been both ends of the metaphor…
Letters From HomeLetter 016 — The Envelope: The Shepherd's Psalm (Psalm 23)
The most quoted psalm in the Bible. Most of us only know it from funerals. Today we put Psalm 23 on the table and read it slow. The shock is in who is doing…
Letters From HomeLetter 015 — The Whole Letter: The Two Times God Said It (Genesis 12 + Genesis 22)
Lekh lekha appears only twice in the entire Hebrew Bible. Both times God speaks it to Abraham. The first time He asks him to leave his father. The second time…
Letters From HomeLetter 014 — The Address: Most of Us Are Terah (Genesis 12 + Genesis 11)
God's first imperative in the covenant story is go. So why is most of our life shaped by stay? Today we look at the triple separation in modern life, and the…
Letters From HomeLetter 013 — The Story: Lekh Lekha (Genesis 12:1-9)
Two Hebrew words started everything. Go. For yourself. Go. Today we walk through the call itself — the Hebrew, the structure, the going. In this letter - The…
Letters From HomeLetter 012 — The Sender: A Pagan and a Father Who Quit (Genesis 12)
God's first covenant call wasn't to a religious man. Abram was a pagan from a family of pagans. His father started a journey to Canaan and stopped halfway…
Letters From HomeLetter 011 — The Envelope: Go (Genesis 12:1-9)
The first time in the Bible God says go. The man is old, settled, and has never heard this voice before. And the voice says go. In this letter - The canonical…
Letters From HomeLetter 010 — The Whole Letter: Makarios (Matthew 5:1-12 + Hebrews 11)
One Greek word in Matthew 5 changes the entire passage. Today we put the whole sermon together, find out what blessed actually means, and discover who the…
Letters From HomeLetter 009 — The Address: The Opposite of Blessed (Matthew 5)
Our culture does not bless a single thing in Jesus's list. Today we sit with the question Matthew 5 keeps asking, and we are honest about the answer. In this…
Letters From HomeLetter 008 — The Story: He Went Away Sorrowful (Matthew 5 + Matthew 19)
A rich young ruler came running. He knelt in the dirt. He had done everything right, and he still felt like something was missing. What Jesus said next broke…
Letters From HomeLetter 007 — The Sender: The New Moses on a New Mountain (Matthew 5)
Matthew was a tax collector at Capernaum. The most hated kind of man in his town. Then Jesus walked past his booth one day and said two words. Follow Me. He…
Letters From HomeLetter 006 — The Envelope: Blessed Are (Matthew 5:1-12)
The most famous sermon ever preached. And most of us have never sat with it. Today we put Matthew 5 on the table and read it slow. The shock is in who Jesus…
Letters From HomeHebrews 11 Episode 5 | LETTER 005 — Friday— The Whole Letter
Letter 005 — The Whole Letter: Hypostasis and the Cloud of Witnesses (Hebrews 11 + 12:1) One word in Hebrews 11:1 changes the entire chapter. Today we put the…
Letters From HomeHebrews 11 Episode 4 | LETTER 004 — Thursday— The Address
If we are pilgrims, why doesn't most of our life look like that? Today we let the chapter ask the question it has been building toward, and we sit with the…
Letters From HomeHebrews 11 Episode 3 | LETTER 003 — Wednesday — The Story
Letter 003 — The Story: He Went, Not Knowing Where (Hebrews 11 + Genesis 12) Abram was seventy-five. Settled. Comfortable. The big decisions were behind him…
Letters From HomeHebrews 11 episode 2 | The Sender: Who Wrote Hebrews?
Letter 002 — The Sender: Who Wrote Hebrews? (Hebrews 11) The letter has no signature. Two thousand years of careful readers, and we still don't know who held…
Letters From HomeHebrews 11 episode 1
Episode title | Letter 001 — The Envelope: The Cloud of Witnesses (Hebrews 11) The week opens with a chapter you may think you know, and a question you may not…