In a Lukan parable, Jesus uses the image of “storing,” accumulating and building up a certain quality inside one’s heart. 

“Call,” a notion that figures prominently in the Scriptures, God summoning people to change direction. Heading nowhere in particular, someone senses an inner prod to take some new course.

I can imagine Peter’s consternation when Jesus challenges him to head out one more time. Likely shaking his head, Peter nonetheless gives his “ok, one more!” 

“Taking in the news.” It can refer to events both good and bad, taking in the news of a baby’s birth, for instance, or at the other end, receiving word of a loved one’s passing.

A gift – something given over freely, with good will and coming not from obligation but from good will and esteem. It raises the question: of all the gifts to receive, which would be the most valuable and precious?

This thread of “Stop, Look and Go” winds through the words and actions of this Feast of Epiphany.

What the teacher had done was prepare him to see. She had given him a way to notice more of what was there.

More than most any other, the feast of Christ the King immerses us in this swirling dilemma of negotiating worlds.

When you hear that someone is “acting out” it usually isn’t heard as a compliment.

There’s an instinct to idealize the saints as entirely different from the rest of us, off in another league at some unattainable level of holiness and favor with God.