Six years ago, Wanda Dench sent out a group text, letting her family know what time to come over for Thanksgiving dinner. She got her grandson's number mixed up, accidentally sending the message to a 17-year-old high school senior named Jamal. He thought his grandma had gotten a new phone, so he texted back, and…
Thoughts on Christmas “merriment”
The joke among my kids is that I'm a grinch, for I'm not much for the Christmas spirit. I'll admit it: they're mostly right - but not because of the meaning of Christmas, but due to what we've made of Christmas. I really struggle with how, as Kathleen Norris writes, "the world force-feeds us merriment…
Jesus & the Story of God
On Sunday, I mentioned that the story and the scriptures of the Old Testament are all throughout the Gospel of Matthew. Because of this, Richard Hays compares Matthew to an annotated study Bible. Hays focuses on 13 places where Matthew points to the Hebrew scriptures in clear, can't-miss terms. If in Matthew's day they had…
Gulping Grace 