Tag: faith hope and love
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Good Friday
Early on we learn that faith is a risk; much later we learn the price of this risk. … Having faith means believing that He fills all space, that no leap can cast me out of His arms. Having faith means believing that He knows everything, that before I arrive He runs through the infinitely […]
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Democracy, and Innovation
The Presbyterians love deliberative bodies. This was brought home to me once again yesterday, because it was annual congregational meeting day, and also because I have been reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, in which one of the central concerns is why we think the unfreedom of various authoritarian arrangements is […]
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Reflecting on Genesis 21 8-20
Considering the challenges of our text for Sunday, January 9, and considering how close we are to the beginning of a new year, maybe the main question this text will raise for us is: how do we want to write our own stories? What do we want our own stories to include, and to exemplify, […]
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Sanctuary
What does it mean to be “close to home”? We’ve been reflecting on the various meanings of “home,” our little congregation, this Advent. And yesterday’s fourth Sunday of Advent focused on the idea of “sanctuary” – “somewhere God’s love dwells freely and abundantly.” How we need that. Need that ourselves. And then, can be that […]
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Misery
People’s children are sick. Their grown children. Sick in ways that children should not be before their parents. Sick in ways that are wrong and heartbreaking and exhausting and unbelievable. Sometimes this happens: The world turns strange in an instant. Things that were always remote theoretical possibilities become hideously concrete and immediate. The world goes […]
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Reflecting on Revelation 11 15-19
What do we think it would take, concretely, for “the kingdom of this world” to become a place where God’s will is done as it is in heaven? If we understand the book of Revelation as a vision of that transition, what does it tell us about that? That seems to me to be a […]
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Life after Birth
One of the perennial questions of the humanities is “What is a good life?” Religious studies ends up in the College of the Humanities in some universities because religion is fully absorbed in answering that question. At least, that’s one way of looking at it. Some Christians think of Christianity as being primarily about “life […]
Matters of Interpretation 