Either/or binaries help us make sense of life. Wheat & weeds. Good seeds and bad seeds. A landowner and his enemy. A barn where the wheat will be gathered into… and a fire, where the weeds will be burned. The Kingdom of God and the fiery furnace. Jesus, the Human One – and the Devil, […]
Jesus uses earthy images in pithy, pointed, sometimes confusing parables that both illuminate and obscure what the kingdom of God is like. Just in Matthew’s 13th chapter he speaks of soil and seeds and weeds and yeast and pearls and fish and fire. And with these punchy, Tik-Tok length storylines, Jesus’ hooks our fleeting attention-spans. […]
Ben spent last week at Camp Friedenswald in Michigan, a Mennonite camp supported by our conference, where he was the camp pastor for the pre-junior week. Ben draws on his camp experience to reflect on what it means to follow Jesus by walking in wonder. [Photo: Friedenswald campers & counselors circled up for a closing […]
I was jaded and cynical about academics by the time I finished high school. So the year after graduation I found myself in Albuquerque, New Mexico with Service Adventure, a…
What are we waiting for? I sit in front of my glowing computer screen waiting and hoping that some word from God would be present in my heart and on…
Good teachers take us from where we are, to a place we couldn’t even quite imagine before we began the journey of learning. Sometimes the choice to be a learner,…
This past week I was on a walk with my wife Alli in the dusk of early evening. We were catching up after a day of work. As we walked…
Prayer: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” In an earlier sermon I opened with…
The other week, as Alli and I were caravanning out here, I listened straight through to all nine episodes of the WYNC Studios podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.” They powered me…
Numbers 6:24-26 (VT #826), Jeremiah 29:4-11 (VT #783), Isaiah 52:7 (VT #781), Luke 4:16-19, 21 (VT #292), Matthew 28:16, 18-20 (VT #451) This is the last sermon in this series…
