Imagine: it’s a time of great national upheaval. The future of your nation has been cast into uncertainty. In the midst of all of that, God appears to you. How would you react? That’s what the prophet Isaiah experienced: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord…
There’s a scene toward the end of Terminator 2 that has always stuck in my head. Ah-nold has gotten down fighting the evil T-1000. He’s endured a great deal of abuse at his enemy’s hands. He’s missing an arm, half of his face has been blasted off, and at one…
A question that we all seem to struggle with at one time or another is “What is love?” What does it look like? What are its shapes and contours? And what will love prompt us to do?
There’s an apple tree growing in a vacant lot next to my house. We discovered it a few years ago when it had a good summer, by which I mean it dropped crab apples all over the place, enough that it spilled over into our yard. It was hidden behind…
Who you gonna call?
A challenging passage for today: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we…
No, the title of this post is not a typo. I didn’t mash my head against the keyboard. Instead, these two words are part of a puzzle that surrounds the Easter story as it’s found in Mark. Actually, those two words represent the way you can tell if you have…
So a fellow Lutheran pastor recently started a video podcast…thing on YouTube called the Spiritual Howcast. It’s a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I’ve been hoarding its goodness. Well, no more. Here’s the latest episode. Enjoy!
Today, many Christians celebrated Palm Sunday, remembering how Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. There’s a bunch of stuff packed into this one story, but I find one detail in Luke’s version of the events interesting. Jesus’ disciples are making a lot of racket about how Jesus is the…
Back in January, I wrote a post about Jesus and fig trees. One of you, namely Michelle Wood, made this comment: [W]hen I saw the title I thought you were going to go into the one Jesus cursed (a very odd little story). Michelle is right. The story of the…