The economy, inflation, spending money that isn’t there—got you worried? Surviving your retirement? Healthcare, sickness—concerned about these? Conflict and horrendous crimes, at home and abroad, terror attacks, urban chaos, drug…
It may not feel or seem as if much yields to the name of Jesus these days. It’s as if the name Jesus has sort of become an empty but…
Now back once more on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee, Jesus returns to a place he had previously visited. Luke does not tell us exactly where these…
Jews would not keep herds of pigs. The territory into which Jesus takes his disciples now is Gentile territory; more, it’s culturally Greek. Greek thought owed nothing to and had…
As we find out elsewhere in the New Testament, not every Roman soldier was from Italy. The centurion—like a captain in the army, over around one hundred soldiers—the centurion may…
Nearly seventy years ago, William Barclay wrote: “[i]t is a grim commentary on human nature that many a book and many a play and many a film has had success…
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…
The sermon on the mount—Matthew tells us that Jesus spoke to the people on a mount, a big, high hill. Maybe that would remind Jewish listeners of Moses on the…
Wasn’t it Kenny Rogers, bless his heart, who sang about someone believing in him? Then there’s that even older song about the paper moon: “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world…
It can feel like there’s so much a Christian has to give up, to be a Christian. If it were just a matter of giving up things like kale, I…