In the 1946 film, The Bell’s of St. Mary’s, Bing Crosby sings Grant Clarke & George W. Meyer’s, In the Land of Beginning Again. This sappy, wistful, wonderful song fits the film beautifully, wishing for the chance to start fresh, to let go of past regrets, and to move forward […]
Is our faith a blessing or a burden? Are the practices of prayer, worship, fasting, giving, serving and studying gifts or obligations? The way a person answers these questions is very telling as to the role and value of faith in her or his life. It is continuously fascinating to […]
I saw a heartening article in USA Today on Christmas Eve. Jews and Muslims in the Detroit area were joining together to do charity work on Christmas Day to help compensate the lack of Christians who would be off celebrating their holiday instead of working in soup kitchens and food […]
Driving past a church this morning, I noted that the Nativity scene was already down (sorry Wise Men — snooze, ya’ lose. Wouldn’t want to honor Epiphany by accident or on purpose…) and Mary and Joseph were laying face down in the snow and the baby Jesus was buried under […]
I surf a lot of sites and listen in on a lot of discussion threads about what people choose and choose not to believe. What is interesting is that both sides deny they are making a choice about what to believe. Dogmatism swings both ways, and many loud voices on […]
No, it’s not a generic wish for peace on earth, but a specific wish for those of us calling ourselves “Christian.” I wish that we — collectively and individually –could provide an example to the whole world of mercy, justice, civility, kindness, grace, acceptance, love, and joy, so that people […]
Part of what makes the Christmas story so phenomenal is that we know how it all turns out. We know who Jesus is. His birth narrative — for us — is nothing more than a remembrance. It is the story of the genesis of God’s redemptive act. It is the […]
There is a special kind of snow — it falls not in flakes, but in hunks. It drifts down in surreal, tumbling patterns and sticks to everything. It muffles all sound. It transforms the world into a snowglobe. There is nothing I love more than walking in such snow, and it […]
Okay, this falls into the “so insignificant you probably shouldn’t waste time reading it” category, but an amazing thing has happened this year: it feels like Christmas! And the only thing that has changed (other than my job, the state in which I live, the house in which I live, […]
Mortality is a scary thing. I’m not dying, but much of what I have written is. As of December 31, almost every book I have written for Discipleship Resources is going out of print. (The one exception is Vital Signs, but its days are numbered as well…) Part of my […]
United Methodeviations 