Ruminations
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On the blessing of interruptions
If you want to make the most of your life and fulfill your highest purpose, business experts and life coaches tell us, you need to stay focused on your dream or goal and resist distractions and interruptions as much as possible. By letting go of distractions and avoiding interruptions, you’ll increase your prospects of arriving… Continue reading
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The mark of the Christian
Love is more than a commandment of Jesus (see John 13:31-35). Love is an invitation and a promise. It’s the condition in which we experience the abundant life into which Jesus invites us (John 10:10). It’s the land flowing with milk and honey into which God promises to deliver us (Exod. 3:7f). It’s the house… Continue reading
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Letter to Thomas, 27 April 2025
For several years, for the Sunday after Easter Day, I’ve written a letter to the disciple Thomas. Some of them I’ve made public. This is one of them. Dear Thomas: The theme song from Cheers has been coming to mind a lot recently. It begins, “Making your way in the world today / Takes everything… Continue reading
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To save one life
Occasionally, I take note of obituaries and death notices. It happens with greater frequency now that the days of my life have passed the biblical seventy years (Psalm 90:10). Whether I’m one of those strong enough to pass eighty is yet to be seen, but it has long been perfectly clear to me that those… Continue reading
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Going to Jerusalem
Sometimes a slight shift in perspective is all it takes to see something familiar in a totally new light. Rearrange things in your home – pictures, furniture, seating arrangements – and you might see them again as if for the first time. Look at a loved one after a long absence or an especially difficult… Continue reading
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When night becomes day
Here’s a game that might make your Lent a little more interesting. It’s called “Purgatory,” named for the waiting room where, some Christians believe, your sins are purged and your soul is purified before entering heaven. The way the game’s inventor imagined it, people with contradictory views of life would be paired with each other… Continue reading
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Remember who you are
“How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34)! Traditionally during Lent, we share vicariously in Jesus’ forty days of being tested in the wilderness to see what he was made of and who he would be. But… Continue reading
The Sauntering Pilgrim 