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The Risk of Faith

The writer of Hebrews said: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is trusting that there is more to life than meets the eyes, but faith is not being gullible and unthinking. Christians are not like the...

A Wake-Up Call

Success of any kind—more money, greater achievement, more recognition, more praise, and, especially, more power and influence—can (it doesn’t have to, but it can) put us in a precarious place. Success can turn us in on ourselves. We begin to believe our own...

A Ray of Light Doesn’t Seek the Sun

I recently read Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: An Introduction to the Christian Practice of Contemplation. Laird teaches at Villanova University, and he draws, in this book, on his academic specialty, patristics (the early centuries of the church,...

Outside Time?

I am slowly working my way through Sara Maitland’s intriguing memoir of her exploration of solitude and silence, A Book of Silence. Maitland is an accomplished writer, known primarily for her novels, who writes with a kind of musical grace. In in A Book of...

A God to Love

Yesterday’s sermon explored Jesus’ familiar Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus told the story as part of a conversation with a “lawyer” (a teacher of Torah, the Law of Moses). Early in that conversation, Jesus and the teacher agreed with each...

The Key of “B-Natural” and “I am not asleep”

James Dixon is a friend who lives in metropolitan Washington, D.C. and serves as pastor of a very vibrant African-American church. When I worked as pastor of a church in the same area, our two congregations would, from time to time, worship together and share in...