I have mentioned in a previous sermon that I am participating in a one-year Ignatian retreat. Learning and practicing the various Ignatian spiritual exercises has been a true gift. My favorite practice from Ignatius is the practice of approaching Scripture with one’s imagination. Ignatius believed that God uses everything to speak to us, including our […]
We live in a world today where the development of the individual is of paramount importance. We value the individual over community. And this focus on the individual is seen all around us. From the day our children are born we are watching them to see what their individual gifts and talents might be. We […]
As I read our lessons for today in preparation for writing this sermon, I found myself drawn to and intrigued by our reading from Nehemiah. I think there were two reasons for this. First, it has been a long time since I studied this book of the Bible, and I realized I had forgotten most […]
Because very few of us regularly sit down and read entire books of the Bible from start to finish in one or just a few readings, we don’t often think about why the author of a particular book put a story where it is in the narrative. For example, Matthew says that Jesus’ first public […]
The Epiphany story, the story of the Wise Men is a story that most of us have heard countless times. We love the image of the learned men from a faraway land traveling over many miles to bring gifts and their reverence to the newly born Messiah. It is a romantic story. And the image […]