1 corinthians on Mind and Body

It was Saint Thomas Aquinas who coined the Latin phrase anima forma corporis , which means “the soul is the form of the body.” The soul, as I said previously, is defined as the first principle of...

Christians are often accused of two wrong-headed views of the body. One is that we ignore the body in favor of a disembodied, spirits-floating-on-clouds spirituality. The other is that we are obsessed...

The spiritual discipline of honoring the body helps us find our way between the excesses of a culture that glorifies and objectifies the body and the excesses of Christian tradition that have often de...

My husband, Doug, is an athlete whose body is protesting. He has had numerous knee injuries and torn his Achilles tendon twice. Doctors have operated on him, put casts on him and sent him home, thereb...

The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck was convinced that buried in our explicit pursuit of sex is an implicit pursuit of God. He noted that sex is likely to be the closest that most people ever come to ...

The average adult brain consists of more than 10 billion neurons communicating with one another through more than 10 trillion synaptic connections. (Synaptic connections are the junctions or gaps betw...

Father: You shape and form us so each is unique yet all are in Your image, when You breathe into us the breath of life. We praise You! Jesus, God the Son–Resurrection and Life: You chose to die and ri...

Gracious and loving God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We praise you for how wide, how high, and how deep is Your vast love for all people. Incarnate in Jesus, You offered Your life for the healing of ...

I wasn’t raised in a Christian family. I only entered the “Christian bubble” of a Southern Baptist youth group in junior high, where I pledged myself to abstinence before marriage at a True Love Waits...

God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit–You know what it’s like to be many and one at the same time. In You, we too are many ... yet one. You’ve made us one body—a single family unified for one purpose; with ...

Interestingly enough, even secular research indicates that exercise and spirituality go hand in hand. “A biological mechanism is at work,” says William C. Bushell, a Massachusetts Institute of Technol...

When we watch cartoons, it is fun to see the way we can so easily allow some of the craziest stuff to just be taken at face value. Movements that don’t follow the laws of physics? Sure. Talking animal...

James Nelson describes sexuality as the central clue to what God is up to in the world. While this might seem a little over the top, when you think about it, sexuality factors integrally in our relati...

The Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Body as Metaphor The text from 1 Corinthians is one of several in which the apostle Paul uses the imagery of the body to describe both the unity and diversity o...

The Text: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a The Body as Metaphor The text from 1 Corinthians is one of several in which the apostle Paul uses the imagery of the body to describe both the unity and diversity o...

It’s wrong to shame someone!” the student asserted, with clear pain in her eyes. Just to be clear, I hadn’t done anything, but she seemed to be talking about some personal experience. “Is it always wr...

It’s wrong to shame someone!” the student asserted, with clear pain in her eyes. Just to be clear, I hadn’t done anything, but she seemed to be talking about some personal experience. “Is it always wr...

A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our months and seasons reflect...

Preaching Commentary A Christmastide Community A recent podcast reminded me that there is no such thing as a “neutral” marking of our time—our minutes and our hours, our days and our weeks, our mon...

Surprisingly enough, it was in the process of staying faithful to the spiritual journey that I first began to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body. At the ripe old age of thirty, I could ...

Introduction Sometimes verses 1-4 are separated from 5-10 in preaching. N. T. Wright points out, however, that in both sections, the need for humility binds the passages together. A teacher must prac...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

Introduction Our lectionary text is inextricably linked with the five verses that precede it. For that reason, I’ll give a summary of verses 1-4. It’s possible the lectionary authors chose to separat...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

Preaching Commentary Context Jesus' Ministry Begins This passage is from the first chapter of John’s gospel and describes the beginning of Jesus’ ministry—fitting for the beginning of a new ye...

Advent 2023: Make Some Noise! AIM commentary Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the David...

Let us love the Lord God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Let us love Him with all our understanding, powers, and fortitude. Let us offer to Him our every effort, ...

Ancient lens What's the historical context? Couldn’t See That Coming Powerful parents with a family pedigree derived from Judah and the Davidic line was the common narrative for how most peop...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...