luke from mark 10

I absolutely love Marvel movies. I’m talking about Thor, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Black Widow, Guardians of the Galaxy. All of them. In Ragnarok , Thor, the Norse god, played by the incredibly good-...

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity that we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.

My wife is a big fan of an advice column called “Ask a Manager.” The articles offer a variety of subjects, many of which are serious, but some are downright hilarious. They often capture the absurditi...

William James, in a famous letter to H. G. Wells in 1906, credited what he called American “moral flabbiness” to “the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpr...

Leonard Sweet shares an interesting story in the introduction to Neil Cole’s book, Organic Church , about a parish pastor who lived in a Scottish village near Edinburgh called Davidson’s Mains. ...

Gracious God, you are the author of life and giver of all good things. Yet we have worked against your goodness, passing people by, and ignoring their needs. Father, forgive us for walking away from p...

Hence, whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor.

Nor, indeed, can a man properly be said to save anything, if he only lays it up. You may as well throw your money into the sea, as bury it in the earth. And you may as well bury it in the earth, as in...

A group of fourth-graders at a Christian school was given an assignment to draw what they would like to do if Jesus spent a day with them. After working diligently on their pictures, one little girl a...

Those not familiar with ancient Greek philosophy may be surprised to find deep resonance with the teachings of Jesus. When on trial for his life, the 70-year-old Socrates pugnaciously responded that,...

How do we overcome the spiritual “power” of money? Not by accumulating more money, not by using money for good purposes, not by being just and fair in our dealings. The  law of money  is the law o...

I heard of a funeral in California where a man requested to be buried seated behind the wheel of a brand new Cadillac, dressed in a tuxedo, with a two-dollar cigar in his mouth. He left the money to i...

Just this morning, my family attended church with our son who has autism. He was particularly enthused by the music today, and he was moving around quite a bit. A man in the choir noticed our son, and...

The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...

A possession ought to belong to the possessor, not the possessor to the possession.

"The Kyrie" is a very ancient prayer, taken directly from the gospels and is sung or said in Christian churches worldwide. It is thought to be a vestige of the time when all Christian servic...

Reflection We all are aware of cultures that have a hierarchy—a pecking order. The elite and the hoi polloi. The acceptable and the unacceptable. In such cultures, the hierarchy determines the role. ...

Reflection Most of us are familiar with the words attributed to the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar, “ Veni, Vidi, Vici .” I came. I saw. I conquered. That is the way of imperial rulers in their conquest...

Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...

God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...

Lord Jesus Christ, you gave up everything to come down from heaven in order to love and serve us. Unlike you, we find self-sacrifice hard. Most of us look for ways to puff ourselves up, so that we loo...

Lord—You’re the God who notices. You notice a desperate woman who touches Your garments in a crowd. You notice a lonely, little tax-collector in a tree. You notice a blind man on the roadside, a widow...

O Lord Jesus Christ, enthroned in the majesty of heaven, who, when you came forth from God, did make yourself one that serves: We adore you because you did lay aside the garment of your glory, and clo...

Beloved of God, go now in peace. Go to love. Go to serve. Go with the unending blessing of the One, True, Living God Father – Son – Spirit. Amen.

Almighty God, we pray for your blessing on the church in this place. Here may the faithful find salvation, and the careless be awakened. Here may the doubting find faith, and the anxious be encou...

Love takes up where knowledge leaves off.

Though lords still exist today in some parts of the world, the term is used mostly as an honorary badge, so it’s easy to forget what the term even means. Throughout history, lords were rulers who had ...

It is possible also to come at Christianity from a rather different point of view as well, seeing it as something not too difficult but too simple for us, too basic, something to be apprehended theref...

In the one place in the Bible where the Son of God pulls back the veil and lets us peer way down into the core of who he is, we are not told that he is “austere and demanding in heart.” We are not tol...

Love is at the root of everything—all learning, all parenting, all relationships—love or the lack of it. And what we hear or see on the screen is part of who we become.