Grief is a fickle thing. For the past few weeks I have felt the fog over mind and body lifting, at least at the corners. I still have some very dark days, but the light days have been brighter and more frequent. Then the holidays arrived. A nebulous gloom began to fall once my house […]
As I watched the wise men head for home in my imaginative musings, I was left with a handful of questions to ponder. If the Jewish spiritual leaders were aware of the wise men’s search of the child born King of the Jews – in other words, the Jewish Messiah – why did they not […]
Have you ever faced a situation where you had been rehearsing what you would say, only to find that when the time came, your speech fell flat on the floor? This is what I imagine (as I participate in this scene from my rocking chair) happened to the wise men when they finally came face […]
The landscape deepened into tones of gray as the wise men on their camels, their entourage in their midst, lumbered along the western road. Knowing that their journey was almost over, the men were anxious to reach their goal—the home of the One born King of the Jews. A crowd of curious onlookers that had […]
“Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen his star as it rose, and have come to worship him,” the wise men said. I love astronomy, though I am a novice. Yet I know that stars don’t move like planets do. Stars are in fact suns in […]
I’m talking about those foreign dignitaries who visited the child Jesus in Bethlehem – the story of Epiphany – as described in Matthew 2. This past week, rereading this story again, I did something I have never done before (with this passage of Scripture). I placed myself in the story, like a precocious adolescent who […]
A few years ago I wrote a Christmas children’s stage play that has since been produced in a number of churches. In the opening scene, after a choir of pint-sized angels sing “Glory to God in the Highest,” three shepherds have a conversation in which they all agree they don’t believe in angels, didn’t see […]
Lately my life has been like sitting under a canopy out in the middle of the desert, beside a dirt road. Time ekes by very slowly as I wait for the bus to come by to pick me up and take me away from there, but the bus doesn’t come. So I sit and wait, […]
December 22, 2010 It’s been written throughout the centuries that Advent is a season of hopes fulfilled (albeit misunderstood), and expectant waiting for the ultimate outcome to be manifested. It’s an appropriate time of year to see the fulfillment of my dream to start a website and the beginning of a learning curve as I […]
December 20, 2010 Hope for the Christian is anchored in the Christmas promise, foretold by angels who visited shepherds keeping watch in their fields by night. The result of this heavenly proclamation was that the shepherds went in search of the proclaimed Christ Child on whom peace depends. They went gladly, even though it probably […]