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These familiar Christmas scripture stories are the same ones we hear year after year after year. Yet, there is always something new—usually a new meaning—that emerges and makes me wonder, “How come I never thought of that before?” I suppose it has something to do with our changing perspective as we age. We see differently at 50 than we did at 30.  It only makes sense.  Imagine the scriptures as being a diamond. With each passing year, you move one step clockwise ...

When we want to find prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), it’s not a bad idea to turn to the Prophet Isaiah, who lived some 700+ years before the birth of Jesus. But apart from major prophets like Isaiah, Elijah, and Jeremiah, God also uses minor prophets, like Micah, whom we heard from in that first reading. And then, as if to make the point that anyone and everyone—prophet or not–can be used to bring about God’s Kingdom, God ...

I have not met this person, but I have read a small fraction of her work. Her name is Paula D’Arcy, and a few of her roles in life is that she is a mother, a widow, an author, a retreat leader, and a grief counselor. Back in 1975 when Paula was 27, police officers, out of the blue, came to her door to tell her that her husband and 21-month-old daughter had been tragically killed in a car accident. ...

As I see it, the problem with sin is not so much the sin itself, but it’s the remembering and identifying with the sin. That’s the problem. What does it mean to say Jesus is the sinless one? I think it means he never identifies with sin. He never holds himself to past mistakes. And because he never holds himself to the past he has no need to hold others to their past sins.

We can learn from our past sins ...

The great rabbi was dying, and as we all know, deathbed wisdom is the best. So, his students lined up, single file, to receive his last words. The most brilliant student was by his bedside, the second most brilliant immediately behind him, and so on till the line ended at a pleasant enough fellow who was a good room and a half away. The most brilliant student leaned over to the slowly slipping rabbi and asked, “Rabbi, what is the ...

Church year, the liturgical year, begins pretty much the way it ends–with readings that are not easy to interpret or apply to our lives. They are quite philosophical and full of end-time imagery that leaves you thinking, “What could this possibly mean for us in this place and in this time?” Or you might say in mid-life, “Where is this whole thing going?” Or again, for those of you well past mid-life, “Is the whole world going to hell in ...