The bright sun stunned the disciples as they strolled out from the majestic temple onto the bleached limestone. Hand-chiseled, these giant stone blocks measured eight feet on a side. A grown woman could walk two or three paces per stone, and watch hundreds of people milling in the courtyards and patios outside the temple. Rising…

LCR: Hechos 5:27-32; Salmo 118:14-29; Apocalipsis 1:4-8; Juan 20:19-31 Hechos 5:27-32 Esta lección se da en medio del ministerio de los apóstoles en Jerusalén. Han estado realizando milagros, sanando y enseñando. Están reuniendo a nuevos creyentes y forjando un sistema económico comunitario. El sumo sacerdote ha encarcelado a los apóstoles, pero un ángel del Señor…

EL REINO DE DIOS SE CONSTRUYE AQUÍ, AHORA, Y ES PARA TODOS NOSOTROS El año 2020 seguramente pasará a la historia como uno muy particular y convulsionado. En los siete meses trascurridos hemos vivido una pandemia de la cual aún no salimos, algunos acontecimientos bélicos que anunciaban el inicio de una guerra, la invasión de…

For churches across the country, the month of December is devoted to preparation—not only the kind of spiritual preparation that Advent invites; but rather, practical planning: where (and when) to hang the decorations, how to assemble the Christmas liturgies, when to organize the Christmas parties and festivities, and so on. Altar guilds and worship committees…

Doubt is a complicated matter. It can indicate a critical mind, one that asks questions, and never takes things at face value. The opposite is a gullible mind: one that is the delight of unscrupulous sales persons, dangerous politicians, and many televangelists. There’s another type of doubt, one driven by deep emotion, an emotion stimulated…

John Milton, who once marvelously celebrated the birth of Jesus in his “Ode to the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” later attempted a sequel upon the Passion. After writing a few stanzas he ceased in despair and later published the fragment he did write with an appended note: “This subject the author finding to be above…

Today we continue to draw closer to the week of the Passion of Jesus. Our scripture lessons focus on the passion he experiences as he moves toward the trial before Pontius Pilate, the cross, and the Resurrection. We talk a great deal about compassion. Jesus was the most compassionate person God ever put on the…

[RCL] Acts 16:9-15; Psalm 67; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5; John 14:23-29 or John 5:1-9 We begin with a garden. It’s no small matter that the committee who culled, edited, and arranged our anthology of sacred texts started the pages with the story of creation, of growth, of dreams. And in the final pages of our anthology,…

Holy dying. There is a truth about the phrase “holy dying,” which seems to come from the title of Jeremy Taylor’s work, The Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying, written in the 1600s. The truth is this: dying is often holy – from time to time, when dying becomes beautiful, when it is astonishingly a…

What do you think heaven is? A man told this story of his experience just before his father died. The man and his sister were taking care of their father who was in the last stages of cancer, the man staying with their bed-ridden father during the day and his sister staying with their father…