Fear is quite a risky business. Sightseeing in Italy drove this point home. My friends and I were in Umbria, walking through ancient towns and churches. One bright, chilly afternoon in...

The kingdom of God, Jesus taught his disciples, is like the smallest of seeds. In the church we can become preoccupied with size. How many gather for worship? How large is...

Jesus often taught in parables, stories that drew his disciples’ attention to their ordinary surroundings. The kingdom of God, he says, is like the scattering of a seed upon the ground....

Someone has noted that we see others not as they are but as we are. The apostle Paul is writing to the mature spiritual leaders of Corinth and now to us...

The apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth with the weight of concerns bearing upon him—despair, criticism, opposition, fatigue, suffering, human limitations, mortality. He imagines what it might be like...

On first impression, a psalm describing a king preparing for battle and a petition for victory may not seem relevant to most of us. Is David giving his blessing to violence...

In this psalm, a petition for God’s intervention and protection in a forthcoming battle, there is a strong connection between God’s will and the action of the ruler. There is something...

Samuel is given the responsibility of anointing the next king of Israel, and he will make the selection from among the sons of Jesse. He begins the ritual with the assumption...

When Paul wrote the letter we now call Second Corinthians, his relationship with the believers at Corinth was already well established. He had lived among them for at least eighteen months....

From the beginning of life, we begin dying. This is true of all living things. We don’t know if other creatures conceive of this reality. But humans do develop this knowledge,...