The Charlie Brown Christmas Problem
Charles Schultz’s classic TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was originally broadcast in 1965. And, a generation later, the problem...
If Sorrow Is Stalking You
Sometimes God presses us right up against the wall of what we can endure. And sometimes God smashes us right through it. I sat down with...
The Ascension of the God Who Remains One of Us
Europeans do like their titles. And why shouldn’t they? They have some excellent ones. I was attending a meeting in Britain of university...
What We Can Learn from Easter 2018
I write this on Good Friday 2018, but I could have written something like it on any day, any year. For the more some things change, it...
Why Didn’t God Make You More Beautiful?
Perhaps you are one of the blessed few who are entirely content with their appearance. Perhaps you never stand in front of the mirror, as...
Come, Thou Not-Expected Jesus
That first Christmas night, the shepherds on that Judean hillside were properly terrified by the Identified Flying Object blazing above...
A Dash of Cold Water for Christian Anarchism
[NOTE: This originally appeared in Geez (Winter 2012): 38-39. I sent a copy to a friend recently, and it made me think others might like...
Some Tenebrae Musings
As the time for Tenebrae (Latin “darkness”) services has come again, one thinks of the shrinking circle of light in the Passion narrative...
The Great Transfusion
As we travel through Lent, we recall Luther’s speaking, in a letter to Georg Spenlein (1516), of Holy Week as the occasion of the Great...
Resurrection…to More of the Same?
Yesterday was the big celebration of the astonishing gift of “another life,” as they say in video games. How will you spend it?
A Good Definition of Forgiveness
I have blogged about forgiveness in some detail before, notably here and here. Today I came across a particular detail that is good...
The Subversiveness of Easter
What in the world is Easter about? It makes no sense to celebrate the gruesome death of a minor country preacher, making a virtue, as...
What’s Good about (Bloody) Good Friday? Some Thoughts on the Atonement
A correspondent recently wrote: “I’m more baffled than ever about the Atonement. I sometimes feel like banging my head against the wall...