I Kings 17:8-16 The widow founder herself in an impossible situation.  Being a widow is always precarious, then add a three-year drought, combined with Elijah asking her for food and water, and she knows the handful of meal she has left will only give her one more meal.  Then she will die. Impossible is far […]

I Kings 18:20-39 800 million+ weapons in the world.  Most are manufactured in the north and sold to the global south where a majority of the current wars are being waged.  A recent TED talk shared this sobering information.  I wonder what Elijah would say. Elijah held a summit on Mount Carmel.  Present were the […]

Acts 16:16-24 Never underestimate a good annoyance!  Paul found that out one day as he and others were going to a place of prayer.  A slave-girl with the spirit of divination followed them crying out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”  One would think […]

“How long, O Lord?” I found myself saying those ancient words last Saturday in a contemporary setting that is defining our culture. The first was in Chicago traffic as I sped off to Midway Airport to catch my plane after being part of a memorial service for an old high school friend who died of […]

Praise God I never quite saw the memo that told us what praising God really means. All I can figure is joy has something to do with it and there is singing somewhere in the definition. I got the memo last Sunday. It’s from Isaiah. Took till chapter 43 but there it was. The first […]

BHAG Big Hairy Audacious Goal. That’s what BHAG stands for. I came across the term while attending a CREDO conference in southern Indiana in early 2011. CREDO is a denomination-sponsored week-long program for mid-career clergy that helped us look at our lives and ministry in a holistic way. I loved it. I didn’t want to […]

Route Change Funny how we have an idea on which way to go but we often don’t get there, and if we do it is by an entirely different route. Just ask Paul. One night he has a vision which clearly states he should go to Macedonia and help a man there and he ends […]

Visions “A new heaven and a new earth” is quite the vision for a world seized by the might of Rome. We might think we know the Rome of the New Testament but there is little to compare it to our experience. In the words of Diana Butler Bass in A People’s History of Christianity, […]

It just feels good to say. Hallelujah! It is the Hebrew word for Praise Yahweh (hallelu is praise and jah is Yahweh). Allelulia is the Greek and Latin cousin, and they seem to be used interchangeably. Take your pick. But what do we do with them? What do we do with a hallelujah that sings […]

Close to the end of Jesus’ life and ministry, an unnamed woman entered the house of Simon the Leper and poured costly nard over the head of Jesus from an alabaster jar.  As far as I can find, this is the only time in the gospels when someone intentionally does something for Jesus.  When did […]