Can we pray the words of the psalmist? Search me, O God, and know my heart. This prayer involves an element of risk. It may bring to light some things about...

Years ago, some friends and I hiked to the summit of Mount Whitney in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. I realized after finishing this hike that I had been so focused on...

When I was a hospital chaplain, I often visited people who were suffering through illness or loss. Sometimes, patients would say, “Well, there must be a reason for this.” I usually...

A shift in my spiritual perspective occurred when I began to see all situations or places as potentially holy. From this viewpoint, walking the streets of Jerusalem or along the shores...

My father was an insurance agent, so he was well aware of automobile accidents. Years before I started driving, he began saying to me, “Son, you have to be especially careful...

After Jesus shares his parable, after he sows this mystery of imagination and wonder, he gathers his disciples for a private tutorial. Readers find themselves wondering at this point too, though...

Jesus, the Rabbi of the People, sits in a boat to teach the standing-room only crowd. In this gesture he evokes the history of God’s covenant faithfulness to Israel and poses...

Thanks be to God for the gift of life in the Spirit! Made members of Christ’s body through baptismal washing into Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we are “set free from...

Paul contrasts life in the flesh with life in the Spirit, but not in the way we typically assume. Our distorted interpretive legacy of equating flesh with the body has led...

For God’s people, Israel, the Mosaic law became the heartbeat of life. It was the ubiquitous communal curriculum (to be written on doorposts, strapped to foreheads, recited upon going out and...