(This article is written for college students who may be struggling with issues of faith as they are confronted with the “stretchings” of higher education.) It still sends chills down my spine when I think about that moment of revelation fifty years ago. I was on my way to one… Continue reading
In the spring of 1206 C E, early in St. Francis’ career as God’s troubadour, the saint entered the little chapel of San Damiano. This shrine, located three-quarters of a mile below Assisi, was in ruins. However, there was still suspended over the altar a simple crucifix. St. Francis knelt… Continue reading
I’ve always been fascinated by words and their origins. I remember learning at Halloween in elementary school that the word “lunatic” comes from the term for “moon” and reflected the belief that one could become insane under the influence of that reflective object in the night sky. In college I… Continue reading
(26 minutes) Go into any “Christian” bookstore and you will find many books on the “end times” and the “last things”—books on the Rapture, heaven and hell, the Second Coming, the Last Judgment, and Armageddon as well as books with charts predicting the order and nature of what will come… Continue reading
One of my favorite stories from Clarence Jordan’s life deals with a conversation he had with a newspaper reporter who came to Koinonia Farm to investigate this radical Christian community. Koinonia Farm was Jordan’s attempt to gather Christians of all races together into an intentional community based on the teachings… Continue reading
I have been asked why John wrote his message using such bizarre and confusing symbols. If his point was to communicate the spiritual, life and death struggle between Rome and the church/between Caesar and Christ, then why didn’t he just say that in ways that are easy for us to understand? Continue reading
We are told by astrophysicists that our universe began with the explosion of something smaller than an atom. A universe that is measured in billions of galaxies (each containing up to at least a billion stars) and trillions of miles should create in us a gigantic sense of awe and… Continue reading
If you ask someone what a saint is, they might say, “Someone who is holy.” I like the definition given by a little boy in a Sunday school class who thought about the images of saints in the stained-glass windows of his church. He defined a saint as “somebody the… Continue reading
[When I was pastor of the Wabash Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) I wrote this article on July 7, 1993, for the church newsletter. I wish so much that someone had given me a message like this when I graduated from high school and college—and to be honest, from seminary… Continue reading
(12 minutes) I don’t think that we will have discovered America until we have some sense of the feelings of the natives that walked over this place. And the people that were the furthest from understanding the sense of the natives that walked over this place were the conquerors of… Continue reading
