Some people refer to this parable as the parable of the lost son, in keeping with the two preceding parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin. The younger son...

Today’s parable is one of the more developed parables that Jesus tells. Let’s review this story from the perspective of the three main characters. The elder son’s perspective: This is the...

The main character in the French novel Les Misérables is Jean Valjean, an ex-convict haunted by his past. Like Valjean, we make choices that we wish we could take back. Choices...

My beloved, professional baseball team signed a big-name player from the New York Yankees. His contract was worth an enormous amount of money for about a decade worth of commitment. The...

In the city of Seattle when the sun comes out you can sense a shift in people’s mood. It’s not that folks expect it to rain every day; it’s just that...

A friend once said that forgiveness doesn’t simply mean forgetting. Forgiveness also conveys the quality of wishing the other person well. It often takes an extraordinary act of grace to forgive—much...

In the Hebrew Scriptures, we tend to focus on the daring escape of the Hebrew people from Egypt, fast-forwarding through the many adventures of the people during their forty-year wilderness trek....

Icy desert nights bring clarity to the view of the sky. I slept outside one winter’s night at a youth camp in a remote location. Near midnight I awoke, cold and...

In South Africa, news reports recite a litany of stories related to crime, corruption, trade union strikes, political unrest, and other human tragedies. At times the bad news feels so overwhelming...

If the psalmist’s life and words in Psalm 63 illustrate how to approach time in the desert, the Israelites’ wilderness wanderings illustrate how not to. In writing to the Corinthians, Paul...