Blogging Through the Seasons

I grew up in a big church community—well, big in my country! I have been going to Sabbath School since I can remember remembering things. One of the things I remember is learning that names have power. In the Bible, names have power. Some characters were presented to...

Eve took a bite out of an apple; Mary and Joseph, Jesus’s parents, found no room in “an inn;” and there were exactly “these three kings” at Jesus’s birth. None of those facts is scriptural, and yet they are are very much a part of our spiritual tradition. We learned...

“Here’s a question for you: Is it legal on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or destroy it?” Luke 6:9 CEB. The story here will be familiar to most. Pharisees are following Jesus around hoping to catch him breaking the Sabbath law. First, they catch...

One day Jesus and his disciples boarded a boat. He said to them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” So they set sail. While they were sailing, he fell asleep. Gale-force winds swept down on the lake. The boat was filling up with water and...

A couple weeks ago, I was ruminating a bit on the concept of holiness, specifically regarding how sometimes we don’t really like to think about it—also how, many times, we’re not really sure what it means. Does holy describe something or someone that’s really, really...

The series of parables that deal with the lost (sheep, coin, son) in Luke 15 is introduced by way of a banquet scene, in which tax collectors and sinners are gathering around Jesus to hear him speak. This rabbi is so different; he speaks life-changing words that...