Going By Another Way

I’ve heard and read the story of the Magi visiting the infant Jesus* so many times that the words slide past me without registering anything other than a slightly bored familiarity. T.S. Eliot’s poem, which once upon a time startled me with its immediacy and particularity of detail, has now become yet another expected, regular […]

Bewilderment

We enter this week before Christmas telling the story, beginning with these simple words: This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.* I am struck by how ordinary (i.e., messy) is the start of the life of a Messiah. Messy in that it is not what we expect, not all that tidy and neat, and […]

The Courage of Reaching Out

“Your faith has made you well.”* Like many things Jesus says, these words make me uncomfortable. I am instantly transported back to my high school logic class: if it is true that having faith makes you well, then the logical implication is that being unwell must mean you do not have faith. And the idea […]

Into the Heart of Every Christian – Aug. 18, 2022

“As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience […]