An angel comes to Mary and announces that she is favored of God, because she has been chosen to bear the messiah, to be the medium through which the Son of God would become one of us. Mary deserves honor, but she won’t get it, at least not immediately, and not among her own, because [...]

Remember that “Through the Bible in 90 Days” program I started a while ago, well I have turned it into “Through the Bible in Somewhere Between 120 to 150 Days,” which is still better than I have ever done in my life, since, as I mentioned, I have never read straight through the Bible before. [...]

Thanksgiving is an exercise in sanity. It stabs at our overweening sense of sufficiency and control, and thereby connects us to reality. When I engage in thanksgiving I am forced to acknowledge that much of what I have has come to me through forces and circumstances beyond my control. Yes, I do work. I work [...]

I have a vision that has been creeping up and recurring in my imagination. It happened again the other day when I was at the store, either looking at some of the headlines about the economy, or processing soundbites from recent political conventions. Either way, I was thinking about potential hard times ahead, and it [...]

I regularly visit a website titled “Act 3: Advancing the Christian Tradition in the Third Millennium,” which is the website of John Armstrong, a former pastor, church-planter, and an author of a number of books as well as being an adjunct professor at a few colleges in the Chicagoland area. A few years ago, when [...]

MAUNDAY THURSDAY It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. The evening meal was being served, and the devil [...]