There are troubling words in Psalm 50: “Before [God] is a devouring fire.” For months in 2020, we watched as Australia burned. The Australian wildfires covered an area twice the size...

The opening verses of this psalm paint a picture of God calling to us “from the rising of the sun to its setting.” This transforming God yearns for us to notice...

Last spring our Academy group traveled from our retreat center into the heart of Birmingham, AL, for a civil rights pilgrimage. We walked through the Civil Rights Institute, witnessing the stories...

I serve on the leadership team of the Alabama Two-Year Academy for Spiritual Formation, a program of The Upper Room. As the worship leader, I plan and lead the fourteen services...

Only a few weeks ago we celebrated the coming of Light into the world in the form of a tiny baby. Epiphany was a moment of revelation—an “Aha!” Here at the...

One important part of my work as a college chaplain is to begin faculty and staff meetings with an opening reflection to calm our minds and center our being. The poet...

We are in the liturgical season that follows the Epiphany. In this season, we recognize the ways in which Jesus revealed himself to those he encountered in his ministry. The Magi...

Like others in the last section of the psalter, Psalm 147 is a praise psalm. While it clearly calls us to a posture of praise, it also names a range of...

In the second half of the text from Isaiah, again we hear these words on the prophet’s lips, “Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?” This time, however, Isaiah gets straight to...

The prophet Isaiah is writing in the time of the sixth century (BCE), a time when destruction and exile have left the community fractured and in chaos. The prophet seems to...