relationships and community on Epiphanies

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

The Texas-based pastor Matt Chandler spent a decade working with teenagers, and during that time, he realized how a specific change takes place between sixth graders and ninth graders. As Chandler say...

Presentations of the Matthean narrative that have had such an illustrious life in art and imagination are not complete without the disturbing involvement of Herod and the political killings that resul...

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...

Hallelujah! Help Us Shine! Welcome Glorious One Lord of Life and Light Dawn in us your power and peacemaking Hallelujah! Help us shine! You bathe us in the light of your grace, that we may be grace...

As those three magi brought you gifts, we are reminded of your majesty, oh Christ. You are the savior of the world who embraced human frailty that we might receive salvation. We ask your forgiveness f...

Lord our God, we pray these same words written in Ephesians may true of us as we come to your Word today, we pray that you might give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation as we come to know you, so th...

The revelation of Jesus is not contained in his teaching alone; it is also, and perhaps we ought to say mainly, in what he did. The coming of the Word into our flesh, God’s acceptance of the status of...

God of glory, you sent Jesus among us as the light of the world, to reveal your love for all people. We confess that our sin and pride hide the brightness of your light. We turn away from the poor; we...

In the Beatitudes something of the celestial grandeur breaks through. They are no mere formulas for superior ethics, but tidings of sacred and supreme reality’s entry into the world.

You never really know a person until you know how that person perceives himself. I’m sure you have had experi­ences like I’ve had when you were sharing with another person, and that sharing became dee...

Even in another life, as St. John sees it in his vision, we do not rise to God, but he descends to us, and dwells humanly among human creatures, in the glorious man, Jesus Christ. And that will be his...

Lesslie Newbigin, the great missiologist and missionary, shares a powerful analogy of repentance from his days serving as a missionary in India. I remember once visiting a village in the Madras di...

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss an...

Holy and gracious God, may your Holy Spirit give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know the hope to which Christ has called us, the riches ...

We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.

Save us, Glorious Christ, from every false understanding and motivation Save us from the temptation to just stay on the mountain Save us from the temptation to never engage Save us from the temptation...

Rabbi Jesus, Teacher of teachers, thank you for empowering us to know and grow in wisdom and truth. You challenge us and stretch us and open us. You grant us grace to grow over time. We bless you for ...

All we could ever imagine, could ever hope for, He is... He is the Prince of Peace whose first coming has already transformed society but whose second coming will forever establish justice and righteo...

O Lord our God, who first made light to shine out of darkness and now awakens us again to praise your goodness and ask for your grace: accept now, in your boundless mercy, the offering of our worship ...

Lord, all your treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. You reveal them to us through words spoken in his name. May we understand and obey.

Go out into the world knowing you are called to become like Jesus and empowered, by his Spirit, to be an example for others. Amen.

Even for those of us who follow Jesus on a daily basis, the reality is, our sinful nature has infiltrated our minds, and we often find ourselves, either consciously or unconsciously, judging those aro...

Just a few minutes spent reflecting on the promises that come attached to the Beatitudes can lift us up like the whirlwind of God’s love in a revival tent meeting: inherit the earth, yours is the king...

The thrust of the parables is to subvert the distorted myths in which people live their lives. To understand what we mean by “living in a myth” just think of a couple of our own contemporary myths. Ta...

Eternal Light, who has folded back the curtain of darkness and caused the dawn of a new day to brighten the earth, we ask you to gladden our hearts with your light. Give us the light of faith, that do...

Since her first grief had brought her fully to birth and wakefulness in this world, an unstinting compassion had moved in her, like a live stream flowing deep underground, by which she knew herself an...

O Holy One, we call to you and name you as eternal, ever-present, and boundless in love. Yet there are times, O God, when we fail to recognize you in the dailyness of our lives. Sometimes shame clench...

The kingdom is present not in grandiose accomplishments, but in showing practical love in humble ways, day after day, and in refusing to allow our failures and disappointments to hide God’s love from ...

Alexander Schmemann, the late priest who led a reform movement in Russian Orthodoxy, tells of a time when he was traveling on the subway in Paris, France, with his fiancée. At one stop an old and ugly...