Psalm 80, verse 3, verserse 7, verse 19 – Restore us [Reconcile us], O God of Hosts; Show us the light of your countenance and we shal be saved. To compromise is to meet somewhere toward the middle of two differing perspectives.  To reconcile is to move to the correct position, the right position.  In being […]

A community has always been an important building block for all human society.  We now have so many ways to stay connected – email, facebook, twitter, facetime on our smartphones and computer screens.  Of course, the more traditional means of a letter and phone calls are still available.  Our connections enhance our sense of belonging […]

Jesus, standing before Pilate, the Roman governor of Jerusalem, on Maundy Thursday, said this when asked if he was a king: You say that I am a king.  For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. For the last Sunday of the church year, this is […]

Most of us are in the midst of the holiday frenzy of gift purchasing.  And after they are selected and purchased, they then need to be wrapped.  Some people are artful wrappers, me, not so much.  Perhaps that is because most of our gifts are opened by children, and they can’t unwrap quickly enough. One […]

When in the 4th century B.C. voices in ancient Israel were calling for racial purity, even to the extreme of abandoning “foreign wives and their children” (Ezra 10), the small book of Ruth was written.  It described an earlier time of famine when Naomi and her husband and sons migrated to the land of the Moabites […]

The story of blind Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, found in the gospel according to St. Mark, is one of my favorites.  Bart is one of the very few encounters of people along the way with Jesus that is identified by name.  Scholars suggest that this is because Bart became a disciple of Jesus and was […]

In times such as ours, when people shopping, people at yoga, people worshiping are attached, to be reminded of the promised love God is essential for our health.  I think God makes this promise to us: I take you to be my companion, “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for […]

The disciples, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, wanted the power positions in the kingdom of God when Jesus would reign.  They wanted to sit, one on his right and one of his left.  And all the other disciples were angry, James and John were the first to ask what they all wanted to […]

When a player goes down in soccer and appears to be injured, what happens?  Whoever has the ball promptly kicks the ball over the touch line and play stops. In youth soccer, both teams are coached to “take a knee” on the field, when play is resumed with a throw in, if the opposing team […]

The day after Christmas was always a busy day at my family home.  It was thank you note writing, while we thanked people in person who presented us with gifts, the other people who mailed packaged gifts were to be thanked by hand written notes.  The understanding was that no toy could be enjoyed or […]