Category: Doctrine
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I’ll Be Small for Christmas
Children today are raised with dreams of greatness. Cultural affirmations of our limitless potential, well-intentioned, have not produced a generation of over-achievers, but have indeed brought forth hordes of great dreams. This is nothing new in American culture. We are the world’s longest sustained pep-talk. Ronald Reagan loved to quote the 1945 Johnny Mercer hit:…
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The Christmas Play
I was sick last week (stomach bug – my least favorite illness). It cost me a trip to Memphis where we were to spend a few days with family and the joy of watching two of my daughters singing in an Advent Festival. My many years of ministry have put me in some diverse places…
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When Your Ancestors Came to Church
Human beings carry within them a burden of time. We are not “fresh starts” as we come into existence. There is an inheritance that seems to carry even more than our genes. Some few years ago, I visited with my father’s oldest surviving cousin. She had known both of my parents across the years, and…
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A Faith You Can Sink Your Teeth Into
In a now-famous experiment, volunteers were fitted with inverting lenses, such that everything they saw appeared upside-down. In a few days their brains adjusted and what they saw appeared correctly. When the lenses were removed, their naked eyes now saw things inverted, though again, after a few days their vision returned to normal. We are…
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To Sing Like a River
Article from October, 2016 We stood looking out at a river rushing past the rocks – a brisk morning in the North Carolina mountains, a rare setting for the Divine Liturgy. The tradition of the Church generally holds that services such as the Divine Liturgy are to be held indoors, in the Church. There are…
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The Secret Life
The truth of a person is always more than the person himself knows and always more than anyone else knows. Created in the image of God, human beings have an inherent transcendence. The soul is a mystery. Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe What is a soul? This is the sort of question that…
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“That Which Is Lacking” – Is Jesus Enough?
Recent questions on the blog make this article worth re-visiting. I pray you find it of interest. The average Christian, reading his Bible in happy devotion, stumbles across this passage: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the…
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The Ascetic Imperative – A Matter of Communion
Among the more interesting experiences in my life was the two years spent in a Christian commune. It was not West Coast fancy, much less connected to anything historic such as the Bruderhof. It started with two very zealous Jesus freaks (myself and a friend), an apartment, and something of a necessity thrust on us…
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Marriage as a Lifetime of Suffering
This article first appeared in 2015. I have thought it worth re-publishing in honor of mine and my wife’s celebration of 50 years of marriage, joined this past weekend by my children and grandchildren and a host of friends. The service (a molieben with additional prayers appropriate to the occasion) had many of the prayers…
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The Path of the Good, the True, the Real
Imagine a character in a story who is wraith-like, barely existing. His every move threatens to draw him deeper into non-existence. As it stands, others around him are only able to see him moments at a time. He often disappears for whole days at a time as he lapses into such ghostly non-being that he…
… Another text comes to mind. Simeon in Luke 2:30 (KJV) says: “30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”…