Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in their garden. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make […]
Monthly Archives: November 2024
Despite my protest, Dad refused to reshuffle the order of cars in the driveway, so we rolled up in an old farm truck, with a huge dent in the bed and non-functioning air horns across the cab. I was a ninth grader, new to my school and heading to my first party with the popular […]
Our lectionary reading comes from the Book of First Kings. Kings, like Samuel and Chronicles, reads like history but lifts up some events while completely ignoring others. “Kings” is concerned with one thing: “Did the king do evil in the eyes of the Lord?” ( 1 Kings 16) After that moral assessment Kings reflects very […]
Every January we celebrate Baptism of Our Lord Sunday. Someone will dip their fingers in the water and make the sign of the cross on your forehead or hand saying, “Remember your baptism and be thankful.” When dropping me off at a high school party in 1983, my dad looked right at me and said, […]
Sometime Tuesday evening or maybe even days later, we will know our next president and the makeup of the 2025 congress. When things become clear, if the polls are correct, roughly half of our nation will feel disappointed as the other half celebrates. This is a consequential election with the stakes heightened by social media […]
In his groundbreaking book, “Jesus and the Disinherited”, Howard Thurman tells how his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose and his mother were both born into slavery in the American South. When his mother died, Thurman’s grandmother Nancy Ambrose raised Howard. One of Thurman’s regular chores was reading the Bible aloud to his grandmother, who could neither read […]
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