Tag Archives: abundant life
The abundant life
Several weeks ago I asked you three questions: what is your greatest need, what is your greatest hope, and what is your most urgent question? Last weekend the Church Council sifted through those responses and found they contained several common themes, themes that will help inspire and guide our ministries at Holy Trinity. Soon you’ll […]
The other side of Good Friday
In popular tradition, the cross of Christ is a sign of rejection, shame, suffering, and death, which is the point St. Paul made when he wrote that Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8). You can’t get more humble, you can’t get lower, […]
Go the distance
“By your endurance you will gain your souls” (Luke 21:19). The end of Lent is not Easter; it’s this Holy Week, and it begins with Palm Sunday. Easter is in God’s hands; Palm Sunday is in ours. On Easter Day, we celebrate what God has done; on Palm Sunday we have to choose what we […]
The unbinding
Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (John 11:44) The season of Lent does not end with Easter. Resurrection is not enough. The risen Christ alone cannot provide the abundant life God offers, “real and eternal life, more and better life than [we] ever dreamed of” (John 10:10 The Message). Something more […]
Reframing Lent
It’s time to reframe the season of Lent. The way we usually define it is not wrong, if you hold the traditional Latin view of God as an “original sin” kind of god who holds loving grace in one hand while holding punishment and rejection in the other – the hope of heaven and the […]
The key to abundant life
“Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice” (Luke 17:15). If you’re confused by the gospel of Jesus, you might have good reason to be. Jesus said he came that we might have more and better life than we ever dreamed of having (John […]
Increasing Our Faith
I don’t know why the “apostles said to [Jesus], ‘Increase our faith!” (Luke 17:5). It may have been because their faith was being increasingly tested. Jesus had told them clearly about the high cost of following his way (Luke 9:21-27). Now they’re on the way to Jerusalem, where his death awaits him (9:51), and he […]
The key to life
It would be difficult to count the number of lives Dr. Jonathan Daniels touched, not only the parents and children in his pediatric practice who looked up to him but also the medical students in the school of medicine at the University at Buffalo for whom he was a mentor. “Students at the medical school […]
The Sauntering Pilgrim 