Finding Your Soul
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Why Christmas Is So Very Small
Here is the little door,lift up the latch, oh lift! These are the opening lines of a Christmas poem by Frances Chesterton (G.K. Chesterton’s wife), put splendidly to music in the Herbert Howell anthem, “Here is the little door.” I put that anthem on my Advent playlist, yet I’d never really heard those words. Then […]
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Mama’s Boy
Early Advent, just before Madonna and child begin to appear on Christmas cards, I went to the Cancer Risk and Genetic Assessment Center at our hospital. Because my mother died of pancreatic cancer, my doctor suggested I be scanned to see if I carry the gene mutation that tends to cause it. A woman brought […]
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The God We Hardly Knew
Saturday is poem day for the Advent series, “The Dawn From On High” The God We Hardly Knew by Óscar Romero No one can celebratea genuine Christmaswithout being truly poor.The self-sufficient, the proud,those who, because they haveeverything, look down on others,those who have no needeven of God—for them therewill be no Christmas.Only the poor, the hungry,those […]
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We Don’t Have To Do This Again
In Advent we replay the epic events of salvation history, to remind ourselves that redemption is still possible in our own day. The story of Noah is definitely on that list of God’s Greatest Hits. The whole earth is destroyed and only Noah and his family are preserved. When the storm and flood are over, […]
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Was John the Baptist a Heathen?
John the Baptist is usually caricatured as a street preacher wearing some apocalyptic sandwich board in Jerusalem’s city square. In fact, the man steered clear of streets and city squares. “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness,” Mark’s gospel says, “preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” He wasn’t on the street […]
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Limit Your Choices
We’re taught to believe that the more choices we have, the more freedom we have. Plenty of studies have demonstrated that too many choices are actually problematic, paralyzing. Still we imagine that we’re better off if we don’t foreclose on any option and keep our choices open. The problem is, each day we’re presented with […]
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Will Smith and the Ten Virgins
In the weeks just before Advent, as the church year draws to a close, we hear stories of the ending of the age and warnings for the unprepared. One that always rattles my soul is Jesus’ parable of the Ten Virgins (unmarried women). They are bridesmaids or torchbearers who are to light the procession into […]
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Finding God in the Dark
“Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” The questioner who is so confused he doesn’t know if Jesus is the messiah, the man who’s being eaten alive by doubt and misgiving is none other than John the Baptist. What turned the fiery shouter into a doubter? He’s […]
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Learning to Hope
“A shoot,” says Isaiah, “shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” That oracle was delivered to a people in exile who had lost everything. Yet Isaiah is not afraid to trust, to envision a future possibility that no one else can see. In January, 1987 […]