When I work hard to do something right and it gets spoiled, I feel surprised at first, then perturbed, and finally sad. The householder-master in this parable responds to the malevolent...

At the church I grew up in, I was as likely to be called “Kay” (my mother’s name) as to be called by my own name. I resemble my mother with...

If someone comes to our house with a search warrant, we may feel guarded. Can we trust this person to be fair? What if they’ve fabricated evidence? Certainly we don’t trust...

When I was ten, I took swimming lessons at the YWCA. On the day of the final session when parents came to watch, my dad’s car broke down in the parking...

I remember a television drama in which a young man explained to his family why he liked a certain woman whom they did not like. He said, “Very few people really...

Jacob has a strange and beautiful dream of angels going up and down a ladder reaching to heaven. Neither he nor anyone else had seen this when awake. The dream reveals...

The book of Romans impulsed Martin Luther to reform the church. John Wesley was reading Luther’s commentary on Romans when his heart was “strangely warmed.” In today’s reading, Paul struggles with...

The discovery of the Myers-Briggs Personality Indicator was significant for my teaching career. It provided a typology for distinguishing diverse personalities based on the polarities of introversion/extroversion, intuition/sensing, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving....

I find it meaningful to rename some of Jesus’ parables from the perspective of the giver rather than the recipient. It helps me to focus on the grace in each parable...

There is something disconcerting about how many persons in scripture play favorites, even God. “Isaac loved Esau . . . but Rebekah loved Jacob.” God “had regard for Abel and his offering, but for...