In verse 11 of today’s text, the prophet uses the image of a garden to offer a word of hope to the people of Israel who had suffered through decades of...

Today we hear the voice of the prophet Isaiah speaking a word of hope to the people of Israel, who have been devastated by the armies of Babylon. They are poor,...

The Advent and Christmas seasons bring many images to our minds. We think of gentle scenes of snow or of bright stars in the sky. Some prefer to envision a crude...

Despite the attempts of our culture to make this season a time of instant gratification in the here and now, I believe that the Advent and Christmas seasons, at their core,...

This time of year feels a lot like those long drives many of us take as a part of our family vacations. I’ve finally packed everything, herded the kids into the...

Have you ever read the ending of a book before you read the rest of it? Have you ever watched the last fifteen minutes of a film before seeing the rest...

What better indicator of trouble in a relationship than the “silent treatment”? At least when we argue, we engage one another. But when we go silent—either because we don’t care enough...

We haven’t heard John the Baptist’s physical voice in two thousand years, yet in my more irreverent moods I imagine him sounding like one of those colorful parrots that some people...

At this time every year, my kids love to go into the attic and bring down our family’s nativity scene—a hand-knitted, child-friendly set of yarn figures my mother bought from a...

Nothing is permanent, and it is much easier to know this truth than to feel it. No one wants to feel the impermanence of life because that means feeling loss or...