When I was ten, I took swimming lessons at the YWCA. On the day of the final session when parents came to watch, my dad’s car broke down in the parking...

I remember a television drama in which a young man explained to his family why he liked a certain woman whom they did not like. He said, “Very few people really...

Jacob has a strange and beautiful dream of angels going up and down a ladder reaching to heaven. Neither he nor anyone else had seen this when awake. The dream reveals...

The book of Romans impulsed Martin Luther to reform the church. John Wesley was reading Luther’s commentary on Romans when his heart was “strangely warmed.” In today’s reading, Paul struggles with...

The discovery of the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator was significant for my teaching career. It provided a typology for distinguishing diverse personalities based on the polarities of introversion/extroversion, intuition/sensing, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving....

I find it meaningful to rename some of Jesus’ parables from the perspective of the giver rather than the recipient. It helps me to focus on the grace in each parable...

There is something disconcerting about how many persons in scripture play favorites, even God. “Isaac loved Esau . . . but Rebekah loved Jacob.” God “had regard for Abel and his offering, but for...

One of the saddest sins is boredom—taking things for granted. The cliché phrases are familiar: If you’ve seen one sunset, you have seen them all. Ocean, flowers, whatever. Been there, done...

At the monastery, we pray all 150 psalms in a two-week cycle because they were Jesus’ hymnbook. Today’s psalm is terribly repetitious: Various phrases keep saying the same thing—be obedient, walk...

Rebekah and Isaac were in love, but she was barren. Yet she was not unique; throughout scripture, key roles are played by women who are barren—Hannah the mother of Samuel the...