Personally, I don't think I've ever heard the devil's voice before; but if I have, it bears a really strong resemblance to my own. It is the taunting voice always hovering in the periphery in my head, waiting for me to make a mistake so it can pounce on the failure...
In the wilderness of grief, God provides narrative manna — just enough shape and meaning to keep us walking — and sends the Comforter, who knits together the raveled soul and refuses to leave us orphaned. Sometimes the bereaved say they are looking for closure, but in...
For any of us feeling longing in Advent: Even though Jesus’ experience in the wilderness wasn’t easy—he fasted for forty days and forty nights and was confronted by the devil—the devil was not the only one he encountered there. The spirit sent Jesus into the...
The use of song as a vehicle for conveying the Word of God has biblical precedent. It comes from a vignette near the end of the Israelite wandering in the wilderness. Moses and Joshua were summoned to the Tent of Meeting to receive final instructions from God before...
To understand the story, we need to note how Jesus got into the desert in the first place--into this lonely and heart-breaking place where he was to face the hardest challenge he had yet known. Surely it was the devil who took him there. But the story says that Jesus...
Lord, at the beginning of this Lenten season, I sense my need of you,Yet, I am not quite sure how to reach you. I heard someone say, “Read your Bible.”But too often the words are like Bullets that ricochet off my brain. I heard someone say, “Pray.”But my prayers,...
The season of Lent beckons us to see what we are clinging to. The imagery of this season, therefore, is frequently stark. These days draw us into a wilderness in which we can more readily see what we have shaped our daily lives around: habits, practices, possessions,...
He who speaks to us in Advent…knows the wilderness into which we have wandered, and the wildness of the world we have on our hands. It is precisely there we are to prepare the way of the Lord. Into the desert of this weary world we are thrust to transform and make it...
I am maybe the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for, as I have read in the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion, but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems...