Faithfulness isn’t found in a single action, moment of agreement, or emotional decision. The work of being a Christian spans all our days. It’s a continual choice: the choice to walk in the path and pattern of Jesus. It’s the training of oneself, moment by moment and opportunity by opportunity, to follow the Way of Love, to offer kindness, dignity, and respect to everyone we encounter.

Although it’s central to our understanding of God, the word “trinity” doesn’t actually appear anywhere in the Bible. And it’s a weird concept, to be honest. It took several hundred years—and few major heretical movements—for ancient Church leadership to really hammer out the details of what the term even meant.

The Ascension is one of those “huh” events in the Bible. Although the early Church clearly thought it was important enough to pass on to later generations, from a modern worldview, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Flying people are something from dreams and movies, not real life.

…“abide”….is a word of intention and commitment, associated more with military occupation or settling a frontier. It carries the idea of standing your ground or struggling to maintain a position, not simply dwelling somewhere in tranquility.

Even if we know it wasn’t good, the past at least looks stable from here, so it’s easy to desire a return to older times. But trying to recreate the past, itself broken in many ways, only leads to disappointment and failure.

If you were to ask most American Christians why Easter is important, you’ll probably hear an answer that mentions the resurrection but continues to place its primary emphasis on death…

What is it with God and blood? What is it with Jesus and suffering? Blood speaks of violence. Blood speaks of pain. Blood speaks of death. Likewise, the cross speaks of the same violence, the same pain, and the same death. If God is supposed to be a God of life and love, what is this obsession with blood?

Sometimes I think that repentance as active change is hard not just because of the difficulties of unlearning old habits and implementing new ones but because on some level, we identify ourselves with the way we’ve been living.

Unfortunately, a lot of Christians spend their entire lives in a similar state of fear—paranoia, really—one connected to two little words in today’s epistle reading: “the world.”

…what if this story isn’t necessarily about divine judgment? What if God didn’t send the flood? What if we read this as God simply giving humanity the very thing it proved itself to have most desired?

A lot of people, even within the Church, aren’t particularly fond of the Apostle Paul. Frankly, it isn’t all that hard to see why. He’s confusing. He can be harsh. And he often sounds pretty full of himself.