“Pure in Heart”–But Not Perfect

I once had a conversation with a friend who told me, quite seriously, that the first humans had photographic memories, had an endless supply of energy, required little to no sleep, and lived for centuries. It was only after the Fall that our memories started to fade, our energy lagged, we started needing...

Hunger and Thirst for Justice

There is little about the 4th Beatitude—“Blessed are those that hunger and thirst for righteousness”—that we get right. Let’s start with our concept of “righteousness.” We have made it a general term for “sinlessness.” “There is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). This is the verse I was told to...

Mourning Comfort

When Job lost everything—his children, his livestock, his wealth, his health, literally everything—his wife comforted him by telling him to curse God and die. Yay marriage! Then his best friends told him not to curse God, because it wasn’t God’s fault at all. It was Job’s fault. He must have done something...

Bethlehem: City of David?

When did Bethlehem become the “city of David”? That title had always been given to Jerusalem. Forty times in the Old Testament Jerusalem is referred to as the city of David, and no other city in the Bible is ever called by that name. Until Luke’s gospel. “Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in...

Grace Unbalanced

Something interesting happens whenever I talk about grace, forgiveness, and acceptance. People push back. As much as we like those things, as much as we need those things, as much as we realize that they are central to our faith as Christians, we seem to want to qualify them. To put an asterisk by them....

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