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The Two Great Questions
In a poignant tribute written after his son’s passing in a climbing accident, Nicholas Wolterstorff reflects: When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer he... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Luke 10:1-20
Context If you're jumping into Luke partway through the story, it helps to do one of those "Previously On..." clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series. The most impo... -
illustration
Allowing Even the Storms to be “Good”
It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan ... -
lectionary
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Context We haven’t been following the story of Luke yet. We’re now jumping into Luke partway through, so it helps to do one of those review clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series... -
illustration
Same Bible, Very Different God
Last week, an atheist came up to me and asked how I could believe in a God who made parents eat their children. Naturally, I was a little confused. A lot of people have odd ideas about God, but ... -
Quote
God made man small and the universe big to say something about himself. -
Quote
Who will tell you the truth? An enemy who hates you bitterly, and a friend who loves you dearly. -
lectionary
Fourth Sunday of Easter
Preaching Commentary A Letter from Exile To understand this section of Revelation, we have to remember that it was written by someone in exile to communities who were suffering for their faith. Whe... -
Quote
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. . . . We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiah... -
illustration
Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark Together
The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Revelation 7:9-17
A Letter from Exile To understand this section of Revelation, we have to remember that it was written by someone in exile to communities who were suffering for their faith. When we read Revelation 2-... -
liturgy
Heavenly Father, We confess that we are not
Heavenly Father, We confess that we are not always able to see your handiwork in the people and things around us. We do not always see your image in our neighbors, and we do not always see your creat... -
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Pragmatism vs. the Pursuit of Truth
Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t... -
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Stuck in the Houses Our Words Construct
All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th... -
lectionary
Transfiguration Sunday (Guide A)
Preaching Commentary There they are on top of a mountain praying with Jesus. Mount Tabor in lower Galilee? Mount Hermon in the far north of Israel near Syria? Some other mount? No one knows. Sudden... -
Quote
One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak. -
Quote
One of my favorite sayings is, no matter how difficult it is to hear, “Reality is always your friend.” -
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True Freedom
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger... -
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Look Up, See Possibilities
Maybe this sounds silly, but go outside and look up. You cannot see yourself. All you see is a vast expanse of possibilities. Look down. You will see yourself and little else. This is true in life. Lo... -
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The Center
Suppose we hear an unknown man spoken of by many men. Suppose we were puzzled to hear that some men said he was too tall and some too short; some objected to his fatness, some lamented his leanness... -
Quote
Men box God into the contents of personal experiences, and then seek to define his attributes by this limited exposure to eternity. -
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On Equal Ground?
Author Drew Hart tells the story of meeting up for sweet tea with a friendly white suburban pastor, who placed his foam cup on the table between them and decided to make a racial analogy. The white pa... -
Quote
We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered ... -
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Repentance: A Mental Revolution
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... -
Quote
Because of this we have hope: Two men look out through the same bars One sees mud, one sees stars. -
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A Balancing Act
I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini... -
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What is Man?
One discovery was a time-released revelation to me. On my way to classes each week, I had been passing Emerson Hall, the building that houses the philosophy department at Harvard. The enormous inscrip... -
Quote
If a man have Christ in his heart, heaven before his eyes, and only as much of temporal blessing as is just needful to carry him safely through life, then pain and sorrow have little to shoot at. -
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The Professor’s Problem
Please Aslan, said Polly, could you say something to – to unfrighten him? . . . I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either, he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If... -
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Seeing the Manger from Two Different Places
In the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle , C. S. Lewis invites us to experience the manger scene in a fresh way. He challenges us to see the Christmas story as if we are witness...
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