I believe it was the homiletics professor and minister John Killinger who once said that “Jesus is God’s answer to a bad reputation.” I have often thought of the truth of that pithy statement, especially when I consider the way God is used and abused in our world. I can… Continue reading
An impressive television preacher equates faith with positive thinking and promises happiness, success, wealth, and health to those who live by his formula. A faith healer explains to a family which has just lost a mother that if she had just had enough faith, she would have lived. A business… Continue reading
In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul says that three abide: faith, hope, and love. Perhaps few words are as precious to us as followers of Jesus as these three terms. But what do they mean? Even these wonderful words have been distorted in our culture and unfortunately by some Christians over… Continue reading
Today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday and the yesterday I will feel guilty about tomorrow. I don’t remember when I first heard those words, but the truth they communicated hit me like a ton of bricks. For too much of my life I have spent energy worrying over… Continue reading
“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people” -Thich Nhat Hanh Recently I looked… Continue reading
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian who was one of the leaders of the Confessing Church in Germany in its opposition to Hitler and Nazism. Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Nazis, imprisoned, tortured, and executed on April 9, 1945, just weeks before the Allies liberated the prison in… Continue reading
It may seem strange to jump from Christmas to Jesus’ baptism, from his birth to his early to mid-thirties. But in making that leap, we are following the Scriptures. With the exception of Luke’s account of a family pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old,… Continue reading
When we say God is “eternal,” we mean that God is eternally young. (Meister Eckhart) The traditional image of God as an old man encrusted in tradition and sitting on a throne encased with the cobwebs of eternity just doesn’t seem appropriate at Christmas when we celebrate the coming of… Continue reading
Years ago I heard an amusing story from one of my ministerial colleagues. There was a duck hunter named Sam who bought a fully trained retriever from a farmer in the Midwest. On the way home from picking up the dog, the hunter stopped at a pond to test the… Continue reading
Some years ago Elizabeth O’Connor, author and staff member of the Church of the Savior in Washington, D.C., introduced me to the life and diaries of a most remarkable woman. Her name was Etty Hillesum and she wrote her diaries during the years of 1941-1943. She was Jewish living in… Continue reading
