Psalm 126 opens with a memory of fortunes restored: “We were like those who dream. Then our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with shouts of joy” and closes with an echo of longing: “May those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, come home with shouts of joy, carrying their […]
Christian Thought and Practice
An Artist Looks at Genesis: Finding Shalom
“There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. That is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we propose to ourselves than to attain to the kingdom of which there is no end?” —Augustine, The City of God Lifelong, Sir Ebenezer Howard (1850-1928) was employed as […]
Advent Reflection Two: Longing: Come Lord Jesus
We rightly peered into the darkness, with lament, in our first Advent reflection. It can be hard sometimes to have hope. We are tempted toward anxiety and fear, for ourselves and for our world. Novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson states flatly: “First, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian […]
Advent Reflection One: Lament: How Long, O Lord?
“Advent is definitely not for sissies,” declares Fleming Rutledge, Episcopal priest and theologian, in her book Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ.[1] Advent is the short[2] but potent liturgical season that dramatizes the “end times”: the second coming, the divine judgment, the undoing and remaking of heaven and earth. Its character is […]
An Artist Looks at Genesis: A Garden Tragedy
Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after the wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. —Ecclesiastes 2:11 From birth, Bible-believing churches had been my spiritual home, but when I headed […]