Our Gospel passage continues where we left off last week, with Jesus teaching in the synagogue of his hometown. In verses 16-20, he reads the scripture from Isaiah. Then, as the...

Paul’s words to the Corinthian church in chapter 13 may be one of the most recognized passages in all of scripture. Even those with no religious background will likely have heard...

God’s call to Jeremiah follows a familiar biblical storyline: God calls, the person resists, God reaffirms the call, and God empowers the person to fulfill the call. Jeremiah objects that he...

Though I knew a few psalms in my youth, I really began to love the psalms in middle age. While attending the Upper Room’s Two-Year Academy for Spiritual Formation, I began...

The Hebrew Bible has quite a number of prophecies that point to the coming of Jesus. Some of these notable prophecies are in Isaiah 7:14, Isaiah 9:6-7, and Micah 5:2. In...

Paul’s message to the Corinthians has two parts. As we explored yesterday, unity is an essential principle of working together in the church community. But unity isn’t uniformity. We don’t need...

Nigeria is a country of about 210 million people who speak over 500 different languages. This diversity has not been as much of an asset as it could have been. In...

I remember my first trip as a pastor to a village in Nigeria where I baptized fifty-two people. At the end of the baptismal ritual, the people I had baptized, who...

Governments around the world, especially in the region of Africa where I live, fail to support and protect the people they are intended to serve. Many individuals are hurt by the...

In the beginning of chapter 8 of the book of Nehemiah, Ezra read the law of Moses to all those who could listen, and the leaders of the rebuilt community helped...