Loving Towards Restoration
A few taps can broadcast someone else’s failure before you’ve felt any of their pain. In 2 Corinthians 2, Paul describes correcting a troubled church through affliction, anguish, and many tears—insisting the words came from abundant love, not a desire to wound. His example presses a searching question: what is actually happening in your heart when someone else must be corrected?
Faithful, Not Flashy
An acre of dirt, trees, and rock is being lifted over a California freeway on seventy-five girders—the largest wildlife bridge on earth, twenty years in the making, priced near a hundred million dollars. We tend to go for the grand, but the Apostle James suggests that being grand isn’t what matters most.
Not Yet Home
After seventy years in Babylon, Israel’s exiles crossed the threshold of Jerusalem expecting home to feel like home again. But in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Haggai, even a restored temple and rebuilt walls cannot keep old priorities and old sins from returning. What do you hold on to when the future you hoped for cannot heal what exile exposed?
Hungry Four Hours Later
You leave the table sure you will not eat again for a week, and four hours later you are starving. In John 6 a crowd already fed comes back to Jesus for bread, and he tells them not to labor for food that perishes. He claims to be bread from heaven; they still want a sign they can see.
Lording Over the Soda Room
If we have a chance to be superior, we want to take it. Yet, Paul points us to another way even when he had the authority and had been wronged by the people he was interacting with. It’s telling as we think about how we live and interact with others.
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“The godly cry out and the Lord hears; he saves them from all their troubles. The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he delivers those who are discouraged.”
Episode 49: We Report, Jason Cries
The Boys are back — one standing, one sitting — both trying to make sense of Cardinals chaos, Blues heartbreak and the first hundred days of Trump 2.0. Plus: speculation on the next album from Taylor Swift and a meditation on the mystery of Jesus’ two natures.
Sometimes the Little Things Are Big
One would never have guessed the power of just zooming the camera back.
In late spring, as I’ve written, our beloved local priest, Father Mark, died of esophageal cancer at age 49. The grief-stricken congregation was oddly denied admission to the parish church for his funeral. The church ended up being half empty; the service was to be streamed for those who cared to watch.
Ecclesiology, Doctrine, Ecumenism: A Few Difficult Questions
I am provoked by an internet presence that goes by “Redeemed Zoomer,” presumably a 20-something young man holding theologically conservative views, and similar views on Christian ethics, who is Reformed.
Oremus
When one of my sisters phoned the other day, we got to talking about the church in which we grew up.
We were raised high-church Episcopalian. When you went to church there was no other place it could possibly be and nothing but worship could have possibly been going on. As the priest consecrated the body and blood for communion, he — yes, he — faced the altar and crucifix. We received communion on the tongue while we knelt at the communion rail. The lay readers — those who read the Epistle at each service — were enrobed, as were we acolytes.
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