John Wesley
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The tipping point
Advent is an awkward, unsettled, ambiguous season. Retail Christmas decorations pop up as early as midsummer, and Christmas music starts filling the airwaves in November. The Hallmark Channel runs Christmas movies year-round. In churches, the urge to decorate for Christmas and sing Christmas music starts as soon as Advent begins. And in our homes, some Continue reading
Advent, Aldersgate experience, already and not yet, baptism, Damascus Road, enlightenment, Holy Spirit, John Wesley, Letters to a Young Poet, little Lent, living the questions, Magnum Mysterium, Messiah, Rex Tremendum, Rilke, spiritual baptism, spiritual growth, St. Paul, waiting for messiah, Wittgenstein -
A faithful use of money
If it’s not a church-goer’s nightmare, it’s probably at least a very bad dream – a gospel passage and a sermon about money, about our relationship with it, and about how we use it – but it leads to helpful guidance for how to faithfully use the money entrusted to our care. I’m referring not Continue reading
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When night ends and day begins
There’s a game that might make your Lent a little more interesting; it does mine. 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 poet W.H. Auden invented the game, writers with contradictory views of life would be Continue reading
banquet of heaven, body of Christ, Catholic spirit, competition, divisions, Don Corleone, Emily Dickinson, gospel, heaven, heaven on earth, inner contradictions, John Wesley, kingdom of God, Lent, liveral vs. conservative, members one of another, middle ground, now or never, partisan animosity, Paul and Peter, Purgatory, reign of God, St. Paul, The Godfather, unity, unity in diversity, W.H. Auden, Walt Whitman
