More Easter
“You THINK you have this death thing right. You think that life is a small pebble in the dark river of death. You are wrong. Death is a small pebble in the raging river of life. You are going from earthly life to a better life, and death doesn’t consume...
A Prayer for Good Friday
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were...
Preposterous
Jesus entered the big city, on a donkey, folks waving branches as he passed. This spectacle, they thought, would immediately begin a new world order. Weirdly, Palm Sunday makes me remember when Pope Francis visited President Obama. They greeted one another on a tarmac...
Conviction
The wildernesses of life aren’t simply intellectual phases or emotional seasons in life. The danger and disorientation of our wildernesses are visceral. There’s real pain. The threat of despair is real; the humiliation and the tears are real. In these seasons we’re...
Appreciation
The story of the Prodigal son is one of Jesus’ best. It’s probably better entitled, the story of the Loving Father. The father’s love, despite the resentment of one son and the foolishness of the other, holds the family together. Sometimes family division and...
Intimacy
Before Moses becomes a deliverer of his people, he’s a felon in the wilderness. What changes him from a rogue to a reformer is a new intimacy with God. Out of a blazing bush, he hears God whisper his name and the name of his ancestors. The story climaxes with God...
Order
By baptism, and the order that comes with that, God has and is growing a colony of heaven on the earth. Lines on a map and petty political partisanship are too small to contain what God has planned for us, and wants to accomplish in and through us. Still, to be a...
Clearer
God uses the wilderness to give you a clarity about who you are and whose you are. It’s a clarity that often eludes us in abundance and comfort. That’s Jesus’ story. He was in the wilderness. That was hard. He was interrogated by the devil there and in a...