Thomas Costain’s history, The Three Edwards, described the life of Raynald III, a fourteenth-century duke in what is now Belgium. Grossly overweight, Raynald was commonly called by his Latin nickname,...
What do you say to someone who is suffering? And what do you say when it is not just that they are in pain, but that they are being harassed and singled out for violence or slander because of their fa...
What do you say to someone who is suffering? And what do you say when it is not just that they are in pain, but that they are being harassed and singled out for violence or slander because of their fa...
Proverbs 22:7-11, 1 Samuel 8:10 , Mark 16:9-20, Psalm 60:, 1 Kings 17:8-16, Daniel 6:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Luke 17:11-19, Luke 17:11-19, Psalm 136:1
Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. (1893–1952) was an American journalist, playwright, editor, and writer. Like many Southerners of means, he was cared for as a boy by a nurse who had been born into slavery. ...
People think the sabbath is antiquated; I think it will save us for ourselves… When we rest, we do so in memory of rest denied. We receive what has been withheld from ourselves and our ancestors. And...
Lord, you know we are a hard-hearted people. We are prideful. We are stubborn. We are disloyal. We are like the people of Israel who were freed from slavery in Egypt by your powerful right hand, but t...
Let us pray. Almighty, powerful, creator God So often we think we know best. We confess to you our sin alongside the sin of all humanity. We have tried to master creation rather than care for it. We ...
This prayer may be offered with or without the congregational response. Due to its length, consider using two or more liturgists to lead the prayer. VOICE ONE: God of Creation, God of Life, In your j...
God of all nations and peoples, Lord of all places and lands, who didst form man of the dust of the ground, and make of him a living soul, we praise thee for the infinite variety of thy human creature...
Context I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God ch...
Have you ever wondered how people keep elephants, whether at a circus or as means of transport throughout Asia, from throwing off their shackles and marching to their own tune? A single metal chain is...
Exodus 2:23-25, 1 Samuel 1:10-11, 1 Kings 3:9-12, Acts 4:29-31, Luke 7:37-38, Exodus 3:7-10, Esther 4:16
God, you call us to prayer. Throughout the Scriptures, we read about your people praying. The Israelites cried out for you to rescue them from slavery. You sent them Moses. Hannah wept, asking you t...
“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you a...
Context I had a Bible professor in college who liked to say, “All Scripture is cultural!” He didn’t mean that the truth of who God is changes in different cultures. What he meant was that our God ch...
The first thing to notice is that violence is intentional. For example, one of the most brutal forms of violence affecting millions of poor women and girls in our world is sex trafficking. Lured a...
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth' Lord be with those who work and worship The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to ti...
Few voices captured the brutal reality of enslavement as powerfully as Sojourner Truth. Truth endured profound mistreatment and indignities as an enslaved woman. A severe beating left her reliant on a...
There is no lack of pain and suffering in the world. Look around. Read the newspaper. Click on the Internet. Scroll Facebook or read a tweet. Suffering is always present like the paparazzi. It seems t...
Josephine Bakhita’s life is a testament of God’s faithfulness in the darkest circumstances. She was born in Darfur, Sudan, among the Daju people. Her first years were happy, but at age eight she was k...
At this point in the discussion some will remark that the Old Testament says a good deal about being prosperous and even occasionally speaks about wealth, but not about money per se. That is the case ...
Ideas are a matter of life and death. Take slavery, for example, which deems some peoples as inferior to others and regards people as objects to be used. Eugenics similarly witnesses to a whole set of...
One of my favorite Bible illustrations of someone willing to go against the norms of society to befriend another based on love and forgiveness is found in the New Testament book of Philemon. It is a m...
A particularly brutal set of slave owners we recently encountered in South Asia held more than twenty slaves in a rice mill. They and their thugs beat the slaves, sexually assaulted the women, even do...
Never, never will we desist till we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been s...
Sarah Grimke, the daughter of a slaveholder and judge in Charleston, South Carolina, was five years old in 1797 when the sight of an enslaved person being whipped seared her conscience. Like many whit...
The most poignant and powerful time for me in the film 12 Years a Slave was not when the beatings took place or the general degradation meted out to the hero as a matter of course or even the general ...
Leader: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. All: Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Leader: The LORD...
What Paul does is transform the master-slave relationship by insisting that both masters and slaves have the same heavenly Lord and are accountable to him. The emphasis is on mutual responsibility und...
John 1:12-13, Luke 15:11-32, Ephesians 1:3-6, John 3:1-2, Galatians 4:4-7, Romans 8:14-17
Leader: For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as children, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witne...
Since Moses was in Egypt land, Gods people have been struggling for justice while singing freedom songs. Theology can be clarifying. A good sermon has its place. But nothing is more essential for the ...