Jesus speaks with authority. His followers fumble as they try to grasp his meaning. In that way, we are like Jesus’ first followers. Do our priorities indicate our ignorance? Jesus’ mission,...

We live in a time when it is often difficult to know what to believe. We all know people who have had a hard time accepting human testimony. An eighty-year-old woman...

Our reading describes the strength and fruitfulness of those whose “delight is in the law of the Lord.” I think of a group who visited my church in 2019 to share...

Our local multi-racial, interfaith, anti-poverty group trudged along trying to get the work done. Some of our task forces functioned well, but for months our board meetings were unproductive. Our chairperson...

Today’s text teaches us that as followers of Jesus, we are overcomers. This is pretty amazing since in this world there is so much difficulty to overcome. We face daily a...

In my younger years, I viewed the commands of God as burdensome. I thought of God’s law as an exhaustive list of spiritual “dos” and “don’ts,” of “shall nots” and “should...

In today’s Bible passage, we read Jesus’ words to his disciples: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (NIV). These words provide us an important lesson with deep spiritual...

Borrowing the language of social media, one might say that God has “friended” us. Jesus said it this way: “I no longer call you servants . . . Instead, I have...

The Greek word for the kind of love Jesus is speaking of here, agape, means “unconditional love.” It is the type of love that puts the needs of others ahead of...

It was an unusual visit, albeit a divinely orchestrated one. The Jewish apostle Peter had been invited to the home of a Gentile soldier named Cornelius. Certainly Peter has his reservations....