faith and work on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve in Tehran, house-church pastor Farshid Fatah and his family were awakened to the frightening sounds of the Iranian security police pounding at their door. After the police searched hi...

Lord Jesus–You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your advent every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumblin...

There was a woman who was baking her Christmas cookies and she heard a knock at the door. She opened the door to find a man who was dressed in pretty tattered clothes, and he was obviously poor. And h...

In his book Thrive in Retirement, Eric Thurman shares the story of close friends preparing for their golden years: My husband was a lawyer who joked that after “the big case” came across his desk, h...

So he took the paint brush and went out back. She forgot about it until sometime later when there was another knock at the door. It was him. He obviously had been painting because there was paint spla...

Epiphaneia in New Testament Greek means manifestation. An effective method of teaching the content of the faith, not often enough used, is to instruct congregations in the texts of the seasonal hym...

arrives in the world, scattering a song in the silence of the night: eternity utters a day.

Leader: Come, let us be about our preparations for a new advent of love among us. people: The wastelands of life around us cannot shut out the promise of life-giving water. leader: Hatred and warf...

Sabbath is the most precious present humankind has received from the treasure house of God.

Eternal Father, we come to you at the close of day (change as applicable) , when from long ago men and women have always turned aside to seek your face. Wearied by the conflict of life, worn by the b...

The Sabbath is a gift we do not know how to receive. In a world of doing, going, and producing, we have no use for a gift that invites us to stop. But that is the original gift: a gift of rest.

The is an invitation to enter delight. The , when experienced as God intended, is the best day of our lives. Without question or thought, it is the best day of the week. It is the day we anticipate on...

We must begin by remembering. If you journey into a contemporary Jewish home prepared for Sabbath, you will likely encounter two candles lit by (more often than not) the woman of the home. On Friday e...

A well-spent Sabbath we feel to be a day of heaven upon earth.

This Sabbath day has been designated as a day of thanksgiving, a day of gratitude-even a day of prayer. We pause, we ponder, we reflect on the blessings an all-wise Heavenly Father has bestowed upon u...

Our madly rushing, neurotic society needs the therapy of the silence and quietness that flows from a day kept holy, really holy. A day when our thoughts are of God, our actions are tempered by a desir...

Shabbat is like nothing else. Time as we know it does not exist for these twenty-four hours, and the worries of the week soon fall away. A feeling of joy appears. The smallest object, a leaf or a spoo...

Sabbath is about four things: ceasing, resting, embracing, and feasting.

The Sabbath day is a holy day. Interestingly, the only thing God deems as qadosh, or “holy,” in the creation story is the Sabbath day. The earth, space, land, stars, animals — even people — are not de...

Sabbath begins in rest. The Jewish people practice Shabbat sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. It begins and ends in the dark, where rest (not hustle) is the first word.

Sabbath is not meant as a day of gloom but a day of gladness.

Interpretation series editor Patrick Miller has shrewdly observed that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the “crucial bridge” that connects the Ten Commandments together. The fourth commandment loo...

Ignoring God's Stop Sign Have you ever been driving and inadvertently blown right through a stop sign?  It happened to me recently. Anne and I were down in San Francisco meeting some friends, I w...

The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel. Thus, we see a little baby lying defenseless in a crib at Bethlehem, and a tortured man hangi...

Make a Sabbath box. When you set aside time for Sabbath—whether it is an hour, a morning, or a day—put in the box those things you do not want to use…. You can also use the Sabbath box to hold all the...

As we keep or break the Sabbath day, we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.

On Sunday heaven’s gates stand open.

When Albert Berte Thorwaldsen, the renowned Dutch sculptor, finished the clay model of his statue of Christ with arms raised in blessing, he left it to harden overnight in his studio. The next morni...

O God, our Guide and Guardian, you have led us apart from the busy world into the quiet of your house. Grant us grace to worship you in Spirit and in truth, to the comfort of our souls and the upbuild...

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.