the waiting country

​'My life' is a quintessential Iris DeMent song - bittersweet and sung with pathos and a lyrical purity. It laments the brevity of ...

Moses saw a bush ablaze, yet not consumed. The ground where he stood was holy, because the living God was present in his burning majesty. A...

This time of crisis will pass. Our lives will return to some kind of normality (no doubt changed and chastened in a variety of ways). There ...

I have reached the point in my life when I can see what has mattered, what has become a part of its substance—I might say a part of my subst...

In the cool of the day, the LORD God walked in the garden. Instead of running to welcome him, to worship him, the man and his wife hid among...

"He will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart" (Exodus 28:29) Are you suffering from an unquiet heart? As soo...

Something I wrote for church members this week ******** I'd like to try to write something, perhaps a couple of times a week, to enc...

In preaching I seek to do something I don't do in teaching: in teaching I'm conveying information with the best clarity I can; in pr...

Marilynne Robinson on being asked about the language of public discourse (which could also be helpfully applied to preaching, methinks) I...

Ministers must pray much, if they would be successful...Some ministers of meaner gifts and [abilities] are more successful than some that a...

"the extraordinary moment when someone attempts to speak in good faith, about something that matters, to people who attempt to listen ...

For Ames, writing sermons was a spiritual discipline that was unseated by an apophaticisim of sorts. The spiritual discipline fails in the ...

Peter's foundational preaching in the earliest days of the church provides a model for preaching to every generation. It must be practi...

Then the leaders of families, the officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, and the official...

Trying to get God into a verbal formula is like trying to force a large and irritated cat into a small basket. As soon as you tuck in his h...

The books I most enjoyed reading this year, without any why's or wherefore's - you can go check them out if you so desire. (Oh and...

Reading 'church' for land/place/farm in this from Wendell Berry makes for worthwhile musing: Analogies have tied things together ...

Interviewed by Jim Leach of NEH , Wendell and Tanya Berry said the following about people thinking to take up farming... BERRY: Well, I h...

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds...

Every night you're trying to prove your self-worth. It's like meeting your girlfriend's family for the first time. You want to ...