A Baptist preacher told this story to his congregation one Sunday: When God walked into heaven and found everyone there, he decided it was too crowded. He owed it to justice, did he not, to reward those who were faithful? So, he had one of his angels read the ten...
According to Matthew, the whole grand experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph... The child is Joseph's until he says otherwise...the issue at stake is not a biological one but a legal one... Will he believe the impossible and give it a home or will he stick with...
If religious patriarchy was true, the angel of the Lord would have spoken first to Manoah about the miraculous conception of Samson. Instead, he spoke to Manoah’s wife—a woman—alone (Judges 13:2-24). If religious patriarchy was true, the angel Gabriel would have...
Anna is the very last character in the Christmas Story. Mary and Joseph have left behind the shepherds and the stable animals, stopping in the temple to fulfill their requirements of their faith. Upon arrival, they meet Simeon the Priest who would perform the...
Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe...
Love came down at Christmas,love all lovely, love divine;love was born at Christmas--star and angels gave the sign. Worship we the Godhead,love incarnate, love divine;worship we our Jesus--but wherewith for sacred sign? Love shall be our token,love be yours and love...
Nothing is quite so uninteresting as a religious moralism that is always on the side of the angels but never fights any particular evil; which advocates brotherhood, but never in a specific situation; and which admonishes men to be just, but never hazards an opinion...
And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom.Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense...
Friday The sky peels back to purple and thunder slaps the thighs of heaven, and all the tears of those who grieve fly up to clouds and are released and drench the earth. The ones who see and hear know that all is lost. The only One named Savior died upon a cross. The...
There is also a legend that Mary was not the first young woman to whom the angel came. But she was the first one to say yes. And how unsurprising it would be for a fourteen-year-old girl to refuse the angel. To be disbelieving. Or to say: “Are you sure you mean—but...