Get ready to sing and shout for joy! Let’s clear our throats, stretch our vocal cords, and expand our lungs. We’ve been rehearsing and preparing for a month. Now get ready...

And so we wait, now one week from Christmas; even more, we wait for Christ to appear in our midst today. The angel quotes the Isaiah 7:14 text to Joseph: “Look,...

Many times, our waiting will take a countercultural shape. Christ entered creation fully in the flesh, becoming part of human experience. Thus we believe that the gospel can take root in...

For Paul and for us, the shape of waiting is discipleship in Jesus Christ. Christ is our brother, “descended from David according to the flesh” and also raised from the dead,...

Those of us who live in the northern hemisphere have come to the shortest days of the year. With the psalmist, we continue to pray for restoration—for ourselves, for those who...

We wait in prayer, praying with the psalmist: “O Shepherd of Israel, . . . stir up your might, and come to save us.” We hear the word save quite often...

Many of us are used to reading this text as directly related to Jesus’ birth and specifically to the virgin birth of Jesus. That’s one perspective, but let’s do our best...

Advent calls us to the discipline of waiting. But, for what are we waiting, and how do we wait? Preachers and worship leaders will respond to that question in differing ways,...

Every year or so I take a group of students on a pilgrimage to Almost Heaven. Its institutional label is Appalachia: Arts, Energy, and Education. Most of these pilgrimages are to...

Nancy Mairs, poet, essayist, teacher of embodied spirituality, came to lecture at Drew University several years ago. Much of her writing and teaching was engaged in the struggle for justice, artistic...