A man flips lazily through the television channels and stops for a few minutes to look at a religious program. He then turns the set off, gets up, and walks into the hall where he encounters his wife. “Will you,” he asks her, “be ready when the Bridegroom comes?” “Yes,” she responds quickly, “I have…

Among the most powerful forces we experience in life are expectations. Some expectations come from other people. Parents, spouses, peers, bosses, friends, children, neighbors, customers, and plenty of others all have their expectations of us. They expect certain things regarding our speech, our behavior, our character. Often, the most influential expectations are the ones that…

Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! [Ezekiel 18:31 – NRSV] In the campaigns waged around the Bible, and its role, or lack of it, in the public schools, one of the laments is often that we have forgotten…

A grandmother tells about growing up the oldest of four children. “My mother was always very fair,” she said. “She didn’t play favorites. We always knew that we could count on her to be fair. But my father — well, that was another story. The truth is, I grew up secure in the knowledge that…

Daily television images flood our imaginations with pictures of suffering and destruction. On September 11th, 2001, the world witnessed events that blew away any remaining sense of security. Death, destruction, loss, innocent suffering, and grief have seemed constant companions for many of us. The remembrance of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and…

Some of you might have seen the film Signs this summer. Behind the scary, horror movie surface of its narrative is the very human story of a priest whose wife has recently been killed in a car accident. As a result, the priest finds he is losing his faith in God. He has taken off…

Paul’s twelfth chapter in the letter to the church in Rome and the sixteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, both seek to open to us the mysteries of a life lived with God. Herein lies the heart of the good news. Characteristically, it is good news that sounds like bad news before we find a way…

Think of South Dakota and one thinks of Mount Rushmore. Carved into the mountainside are the heads of some of the great leaders of the United States. It’s ironic that this monument is in the heart of an area sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people whose ancestors possessed the land centuries before George Washington’s…