A fellow who lived in the rural part of Middle Tennessee where my mother grew up responded in this fashion when people asked him what kind of Christian he was: "Well,...

Many people make resolutions on the first day of a new year, but what do you resolve on the first day of a new decade? (Though many herald a new decade...

There was a time in my younger days when I used to run ten-kilometer races. Never being a fast runner, I always wound up at the back of the race. In...

Several years ago another pastor in my annual conference invited me to baptize her child. This young woman had been a youth in one of the churches I had served years...

I had gone to visit Hubert at the hospital where he was awaiting the amputation of a second leg. His first amputation had taken place several years earlier. Having been a...

The church calendar refers to this day as the Feast Day of Holy Innocents. It commemorates the children who died because of Herod's fear of the birth of another king, a...

In Rembrandt’s Simeon and Anna Recognize the Lord in Jesus, Anna is by far the most physically active figure. Positioned behind the holy family and Simeon, she stands straight and thrusts...

Step by careful step, Luke shows us much in this passage. We see the poverty of a couple that offers only pigeons instead of the usual goat. In their determination to...

I like to imagine the faces of those who first hear the opening verses of John’s Gospel. What they hear must astonish them. In the highest philosophical language of their Greco-Roman...

“Think of what lies behind the gift.” My mother smiled as she spoke the words. She always did. I first heard them the day before my fourth Christmas. Presents had appeared...