A key theme in a recent workshop on intercultural living was stretching – the oftentimes painful effort needed to expand our perspectives and widen our view of what true and valuable.

That double action of the light, landing and then sinking in, provides an underlying clue to the whole direction of Jesus’ ministry.

Those years between Jesus’ adolescence and public ministry there’s only silence, only the anonymity of what writers have termed The Hidden Life.

The Christmas truth is that God’s light suffuses the dimness of those times and in the end beats back the encroaching darkness.

Advent (Ad: toward; Vent: coming), lays out the direction of the season. It doesn’t just celebrate the future but what of that future is being poured into the present.

The Kingdom Interpretation (Mk 12:44-48) To profess myself a Christian is to profess a desire – and that desire is to follow behind the Lord, Jesus Christ. Perhaps “follow behind” doesn’t quite get to the heart of it. It’s more accurately a “stepping into his...

Testifying (Luke 9:1-2) Reading Luke’s account of the disciples being sent out, I put myself in the shoes of one of those 70 individuals directed to go forth and proclaim the Good News that in Jesus, God’s forgiving compassion is drawing near. How would I feel...

“On Listening” (Luke 11: 16, 29-31) One of the most gratifying compliments is to hear that you listen well. It conveys another’s feeling that something of his or her inner self has gotten through, that not just the words but the deeper resonances of those words have...

The Ministry of Encouragement (Hebrews 12:1) There’s a wonderfully comforting image in the Letter to the Hebrews which has special application to us in Vincent’s Family. The author sets out to build up his struggling fellow believers and does this through a...

“Sent Out” (Isaiah 61:1-2) There was a documentary on TV about the Renaissance, that period of awakening in the history of Europe when a fresh energy flooded into the culture and triggered off a whole new view of the world. The reason for it, as the show presented,...