We have a great version of the entire Messiah we love to listen to during the Advent and Christmas season. In fact, we had to buy 2 CDs so both my husband and I could listen in our cars, lest an Advent fight erupt. The very first words sung are these: “Comfort … comfort ye, […]

This morning at our staff meeting we will be answering the question, “How do you keep Christ in Christmas?” Now, that is a good question - don’t get me wrong. But I wonder sometimes if the main character in that question (you) is wrong. I wonder sometimes if the better question is, “How do you […]

Just this today ... a little gift from a brilliant writer ... Just as some of Jesus’ first-century followers could not credit the presence of the risen Christ, so our own blindness, habit, and fear form a kind of constant fog that keeps us from seeing, and thereby believing in, the forms that grace takes […]

Cultural anthropologist Edward T. Hall says, Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken language. It can shout the truth where words lie. If this is true, how we use time […]

Though Jesus is our ultimate “rest,” and he releases us from the Old Testament legal obligation of the Sabbath, why on earth would we exhausted, sleep-deprived, caffeine and adrenalin-addicted people thumb our nose at the gift of a day of rest? It seems strange, doesn’t it? We all seem to yearn for vacation … We salivate […]

A little break from the Sabbath writing … Today at church a couple I love told me about a new song that basically states if a store doesn’t have a Merry Christmas sign in their window, Christians shouldn’t shop there. They were excited about the song and wanted to share it with me. Now, listen […]