I’ve got some work to do on myself, still have work to do. Life has worked me over, and still does. God is reworking me, praise be to His name!…
Around seventy years ago, a psychiatrist named Murray Bowen began to articulate a theory of how emotions operate in family systems. Bowen noted, as our own experience shows, that when…
Jesus is back from the wilderness, tested, steeled with the Spirit, with purpose, devotion, zeal, focus. People notice. People gather. So many bump through life wishy-washy, pale, bruised. Oh, why…
It’s no accident, no coincidence, that temptation follows baptism. John offered a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jews were familiar with the forgiveness of sins: they gloried…
Though Luke is a Gentile, a Christian, and one of Paul’s key helpers, and, as such, probably not very concerned with the details of Jewish law, he nonetheless is careful…
How to respond to the news that God has specially favored you, made you acceptable to Him, because God is who God is? How to respond when you’re told, by…
More than the other three tellings of the Jesus story, Luke keeps the angels before us. Those angels are busy! It’s as if most people had stopped really expecting anything…
Big things happen in little Bethany. Bethany was on the road up to the Mount of Olives. From the top of the Mount of Olives, you could see Jerusalem spreading…
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (13:32). Which doesn’t stop people from speculating or…
The lectionary that several denominations use—the order of Scripture readings for the year—is organized in such a way that, around this time of year each year, we hear Jesus speaking…