1 Corinthians 13:, Ruth 1:16-18, 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, Luke 10:25-37, 1 Kings 19:1-18, Matthew 26:36-46, Isaiah 41:10
Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...
The warmth of God’s presence can be elusive. In his secret journal, Henri Nouwen is vulnerable about a dark season in which he couldn’t feel God’s love. He’d helped millions of other people around ...
“He held up a book then. “I'm going to read it to you for relax.” “Does it have any sports in it?” “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True Love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men...
Introduction This message is primarily directed to my friends for whom the word “lectionary” sounds like a disease. I, too, once shared your visceral shudder when someone uttered the phrase “lectiona...
Martin Luther said that every Christian ought to read the Bible from cover to cover every year. But, likening the Bible to a forest, he also said that reading the Bible doesn’t become really enjoyable...
The Puritans in American Literature “Welcome to Honors American Literature!” You probably haven’t heard that line since high school, right? After his first couple of weeks of school, my boy came home...
J.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon has a passage that conveys the attractive and terrifying aspects of the mystery of God: It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, th...
What genre of literature is the Bible? How we answer this question will ultimately determine not just how we read scripture, but how it will ultimately shape our lives. One Sunday school teacher, teac...
This week our lectionary text ( This article was published a few weeks late! ) is on 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5, that well-known passage that describes scripture as "θεόπνευστος," or "God-bre...
Unlike most readers in Antiquity who read their books aloud, we have developed the convention of reading silently. This lets us read more widely but often less well, especially when what we are readin...
This blog post started as the introduction to a book review (details below), but I rather quickly realized I had two posts on my hands, not one: There are two quotes about the beatitudes that I lov...
When the movie The Da Vinci Code hit the theaters and the swirl of related controversy began to pick up speed, I decided finally to read the book so that I wouldn’t be found ignorant dinner parties. I...
Luke 15:11-32, Matthew 18:22-35, Luke 16:19-31, Matthew 13:3-8, Matthew 20:1-16, Matthew 13:24-33, Matthew 13:44-50, Mark 4:26-29
The child became a man and the man became a preacher whose sermons were full of commonplace things: seeds and nets, coins and fishes, lilies of the field, and birds of the air. Wherever he was, he had...
Many of us have been involved in small group ministry, and if we are honest with ourselves, there are seasons when the groups can lack the dynamism of a fully-flourishing Christian ministry. This is w...
An Unhurried Practice: Reading Scripture Slowly One of the disciplines that has been an important part of my spiritual journey over the years is reading and reflecting on Scripture. In recent years,...
Revelation 21:1-8, Acts 3:19-21, John 14:2-3, John 14:2-3, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, Philippians 3:20-21, 1 Corinthians 13:12
In the epic conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity...
It is characteristic of any great work of literature to have in its ending something that brings a sense of harmony to the whole. Like the finale of a symphony, or the confetti at the end of a nationa...
Romans 6:4, John 3:1-21, Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:4-5, 2 Corinthians 5:17, John 3:3-7
In the novel, Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley, Buddy Crawford, a horse trainer, has a “born again experience but things don’t go according to plan. This is his prayer: “One night, when he was praying...
John 13:14-15, James 2:13, Isaiah 58:7, Matthew 5:3, Psalm 34:18, Luke 7:47-48
Angela’s Ashes took the publishing world by storm when it was released in September 1996. It won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in the category of Biography/Autobiography. It was also a...
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, has made more money in a single day than Heller had earned fro...
I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of this [gospel] text there are only two possible ...
Matthew 7:1-5, Luke 6:37-42, Romans 14:10, James 4:11-12
In his book, Blue Like Jazz , Don Miller tells the story of his time as an evangelical Christian at the extremely liberal Reed College in Portland, Oregon. A part of the underlying theme of the boo...
In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...
A Special Kind of Story Most Christians have some idea of what a parable is. Ask an adult Sunday school class and you might hear: “It’s a story!” Another might chime in, “with a moral message!” Mer...
God’s dealings with us are always on the order of what he did with Abram and Sarai. He makes his promises, and he will keep his promises; but just how and when he will keep them is something for which...
Romans 6:23, Colossians 2:13-14, Romans 6:23, Luke 19:1-10, Romans 8:1, Matthew 18:21-35, Isaiah 55:1
Millions of golfers know the name of Harvey Penick. His first book, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, became a surprising best-seller, selling more than 1 million copies in 1992, quickly earning the ti...
Those of us who assume that the normative image of Scripture reading is the solitary individual poring over a bound volume, one of the great icons of classical Protestantism, may need to be reminded t...
Luke 19:1-10, Luke 7:36-50, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 6:23, Matthew 18:21-35, Psalm 103:10-12, 2 Corinthians 5:21
Millions of golfers know the name of Harvey Penick. His first book, Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, became a surprising best-seller, selling more than 1 million copies in 1992, quickly earning the ti...