Five years ago, life looked a whole lot different for me. Hilla and I were living in Ottawa with no children. We had coasted into town on a hope and a prayer, the van I traded for to get us there promptly died shortly after we moved into our apartment. She was a Music Director at a church and I was working as the Research Analyst Assistant to...

(Exodus 34, Luke 9)

I still remember some years ago, during a summer vacation, Patty and I were attending a worship service on a warm Sunday morning at a church nearby to where we were staying.

We were sitting in a pew near the back, so we had a good view of the back of everyone’s head.

There was a boy maybe six or seven years old, siting...

In this week’s readings, we are confronted repeatedly by the prophetic word of God through a variety of means. God speaks to and through people to teach us about the divine way, modeling for us how we are to live. This God speaking to and through us reminded me of a poem I read recently by Rainer Maria Rilke from his work the Book of...

So what does all of this mean? How might we to interpret this Gospel lesson? How does it relate to life for us today? 

A new student looks out on a sea of strange faces in the high school cafeteria,
… wondering where he should sit,
… which group he should join,
… how he will be received…

A woman walks down the hall in her empty house to look at her daughter’s bedroom,
… the bedroom contains pictures and souvenirs of...

We have this morning, on this Second Sunday of Christmas, the Gospel reading actually appointed for Christmas Day – the Gospel of John, chapter one.

In a very straightforward way, we hear about how Jesus – this newborn babe in swaddling clothes lying in a manger – is actually God in the flesh.

If we’re to take anything...

For my New Year’s Eve reflections today, I want to pick up on and carry forward the words of assurances and encouragement that we heard in the scripture passages in Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew.

And these assurances and encouragements come not as a result of our actions, of what we do or plan to do, but out of what God does and...

In the appointed gospel reading from Luke chapter 2 on this First Sunday after Christmas, we fast forward from celebrating the coming of God to us in the baby Jesus born in Bethlehem, and jump ahead to a time when Jesus is already a teenager.

And we follow all the stressful drama of this teen and his parents, as Jesus gets “lost” in...

Have you noticed that many of these nativity sets, manger scenes, are so full, even too full, of figurines of people and animals!

They’re way too overpopulated!

Whether the nativity set is sitting on a shelf, or nice fireplace mantel, or in a store window, or on a front lawn …

… We see a whole group of “Wisemen”...

(John 18:33-37 & 2 Samuel 23:1-7)

Fear and uncertainty has gripped the world.

In the aftermath of the brazen shootings and terror bombings in Paris and Beirut, and the bombing of that Russian airline over the Sinai Peninsula….

…. and then the racist violence which followed:
against an innocent Muslim woman in Toronto,
the...