dying on Racism

I was sixteen when a white deputy sheriff shot and killed my twenty-five-year-old brother, Clyde, in New Hebron, Mississippi, where we had grown up. Clyde had returned home from fighting in World War ...

God of love—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You loved us before we ever knew You. Give us such a deep love for You, that we can see the world as You see it, feel the compassion You feel, and be a people ...

Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

Context The Roman World Sin was a very real thing in Paul’s world. The city of Rome, the home of this church to which Paul was writing, had circuses, amphitheaters, theaters, baths, and more. And to...

Context The Roman World Sin was a very real thing in Paul’s world. The city of Rome, the home of this church to which Paul was writing, had circuses, amphitheaters, theaters, baths, and more. And to...

Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....

The way to think about self-denial is to deny yourself only a lesser good for a greater good… Jesus wants us to think about sacrifice in a way that rules out all self-pity. This is, in fact, just what...

Intertwined Narratives Jesus’ encounters with Jairus’ daughter and the bleeding woman are sandwiched together with the intention that the two narratives would unlock and help to interpret the other....

Holy God, we come to confession realizing that we are often aware of the big sins in our lives, but we ignore the sins we think are small. We ask Your forgiveness for times when we have been apathetic...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A letter of friendship Paul’s letter to the Philippians is from Paul and his companions to the saints in Philippi. It is a letter fro...

Death to Life Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? The letter Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a general letter, probably intended for wider distribution and use am...

"No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die."

“You will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”

It is not by telling people about ourselves that we demonstrate our Christianity. Words are cheap. It is by costly, self-denying Christian practice that we show the reality of our faith.

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Gospel In 1 Corinthians 1:17-25 we find the gospel that Paul preaches summarized in Christ’s crucifixion. Here in 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul’s gospel is encapsulated in Christ’...

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes that the biblical ideal is not so much that we need to deny the self as to decenter the self: To see the self in truth, as an integral member of a comm...

The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. What disturbs us in this world is not “trouble,” but ou...

It makes little sense to attract people on the basis of their own self-interest and then expect them to embrace an invitation to self-denial.

Intellectually we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true. ...

Christians often equate holiness with activism and spiritual disciplines. And while it's true that activism is often the outgrowth of holiness and spiritual disciplines are necessary for the culti...

God of Grace and Power—our Friend, who sticks closer than a brother: You know when we screw up ...and You know when we manage to get it right. You know when we forget you ... but You never forget us. ...

None of us are there yet, but if we each have this attitude, we will put to death our reactions to criticisms and offenses. And though we may still stumble, we will learn that carrying the cross is no...

Gracious God, You have called us out of darkness and into the light of Your love. You have redeemed us and made us whole in order to set us free from bondage. The challenge You place before us is to d...

You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.

Textual Overview The Gospel of Luke has a clear narrative path that begins with links to Israel’s past and God’s promises to her. Those promises are now going to be fulfilled in the life, death, resu...

In The Hiding Place Corrie ten Boom tells of the time she and her father needed to find a safer place for a Jewish mother and child they had been concealing from the Nazis. A local clergyman cam...

Textual Overview The Gospel of Luke has a clear narrative path that begins with links to Israel’s past and God’s promises to her. Those promises are now going to be fulfilled in the life, death, resu...

Abraham Lincoln’s sharp wit often surfaced, even in serious moments. At the funeral of a talented but overly vain Army General during the Civil War, Lincoln observed the large crowd that had gathered....

The waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under, but over.