This last Sunday of the year and next Sunday, we will be hearing some hard things: hard to hear, perhaps hard to accept. The starting point is this: why is…
“Not one of us” (9:49). I am not interested in hindering others, but I am interested in strengthening the church: healthy, vital, vibrant, whole. The church is strengthened when we…
Why did the disciples cross the lake? To get to the other side. Only, as it turns out, that wasn’t so simple as they had thought when they set out. …
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…
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…
My phone buzzes at odd, unpredictable hours, especially around the big holidays: amber alerts—child abductions. Often at those times of the year, it seems one parent is taking a child…
We want—and, indeed, need—time for ourselves. Self-care is important! And Christ shows us a model of sacrificial living that may well feel exhausting: when do I get time for me,…
If Jesus is always teaching, he is also preparing his followers. He has something he’s asking them to do, wants them to be doing. In much of the first part…
Now, everyone was always eager for Jesus to do some miraculous sign, some awesome work. They weren’t looking for parlor tricks. People around them were sick, crippled, blind, deaf, hard-hearted…