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Finding the Music of the World
“Take away the words to the song and hope will take up humming;” I’m not sure how the Rev. Paul Escamilla wrote those words on his manuscript before delivering them in a sermon some some weeks ago. There’s usually a little poetry in sermons, even if you’re not aiming for that old sermon structure of →
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Dispatch from the Age of Idolatry
We live in the Age of Idolatry. If you want the bill of particulars, I’ve got it, but it does no good to rehearse the many ways that we have discovered gods who are not God since few of us will own up to such heresy. Idolators are always the other guys. And if I →
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Spare Me the Anvil: Tempered Resilience in a Time of Adaptive Change
If a writer finds a compelling analogy that propels large numbers of pastors to rethink their practice in helpful and creative ways once in their career, I imagine it must be gratifying and sufficient. To do it twice is well-nigh unthinkable. Tod Bolisinger is still on analogy number 1. Bolsinger’s last book, Canoeing the Mountains: →
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Going Somewhere with Jesus: The Lexham Geographic Commentary
In her 2019 book, The Absent Hand:Reimagining our American Landscape, (our Heartlands favorite read last year), Suzannah Lessard described the place where we are just now as atopia, a realm in which place has lost its old meaning because the kind of things that used to define our world, primarily our work, shape our physical →
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Protection From Poison and Poisonous Times
I’ve got no objectivity when it comes to Laurence Wareing. I’ll just say that up front. Even though I believe I’d be celebrating the appearance of Celtic Blessings and Celtic Saints into the world without knowing who the author was, I do recognize that knowing the soul behind the books made the reading that much →
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Adrift in a Sea of Love and Antichrists: The Johannine Epistles
To translate the Johannine epistles (1, 2, & 3 John in the Bible) is to be adrift in a sea of love and antichrists. You get the sense that the community receiving these letters is tragically torn and needs the stern reminding of this elder to remember who they are and to learn how to →
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3 John — A Translation
The Third Letter of John A translation by Alex Joyner From the elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the Truth. My beloved friend, I pray that you prosper in all things and in good health, just as your soul prospers. What joy I felt when our emissaries came to bear witness to →
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How Not to Take the Lord’s Name in Vain in an Election Year
Here’s an evergreen commandment—“Don’t take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” (Ex. 20:7) It’s one of the top 10 from Sinai and it’s most often invoked when someone believes they have breached it—say when they let a juicy God-based epithet fly in front of the preacher. How many times have I been →
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2 John: A Translation
The Second Letter of John A translation by Alex Joyner* From the elder to the Chosen Lady and her children, whom I love in the Truth. And I am not alone in this, but I also join all those who have known the Truth, because the Truth abides in you and is with you unto →
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Seeing the Way to ‘You Can,’ When the World Says ‘You Can’t’
What if your job was to go around blessing people? What if, instead of lamenting all that is wrong, you got to say, “There is something terribly, terribly, right with the world”? And what if you got to say this thing in the very places that get written off as ‘God-forsaken’? Michael Mather has such →
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