It is the night before Palm Sunday. Jesus has already traveled much of the way to Jerusalem. He has faced many trials along the way. He has spent a lot of time, energy, and God’s love feeding people, healing people, confronting people, being confronted and challenged, and all the time walking, walking, walking along the…

“I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” These are very autobiographical lines from Paul, who once thought…

To a Christian attorney or judge, a legal reading of the parable in today’s Gospel reading might seem perfectly obvious: The father’s statement, “Son all I have is yours,” means that he made a contract when the prodigal left, and the contract was binding and final. From that point forward, the younger son would get…

It’s what people call “the good life” — a steady job, a comfortable home, loving friends and family. Moses has it all once he settles down in Midian. The years go by. Moses seems content with small pleasures and accomplishments. He never talks about his past or dreams about his future. He lacks any true…

There was an ad on TV the other night, another get-rich-quick scheme—something about how to make millions through real estate deals without having to work very hard. Doing things the easy way is almost always more attractive to us than we’d like to admit, more attractive than working hard at something, more appealing than delayed…

Wet and washed, Jesus walked out of the river, full of God, full of God’s Spirit. That Holy Spirit led him into the wild land west of the Jordan River. He headed for the wilderness out of which his cousin John had come, preaching and calling people to come to God and be cleansed in…