Month: August 2010

In the Beatitudes Christ says the merciful are blessed. Why? Because, He says, they will receive mercy. So, is Jesus suggesting a simple formula for improving the treatment you receive from others? I think not. Perhaps it’s helpful to first understand the point of the Beatitudes and what being merciful is all about. It is…

A pastor greets a new family to his church and spends the next fifteen minutes extolling the virtues of the congregation and its talented members.  He walks away hardly knowing anything about this new family, not to mention the basics of manners. A missionary team visits a third-world country with the goal of helping “those…

“…the living God fills heaven and earth, and yet he chooses to dwell particularly in one place. And that place is no longer a building, in Jerusalem or anywhere else. It is a family, the family of those who belong to the Messiah.” N.T. Wright, After You Believe “So then you are no longer strangers…

Lately we’ve been thinking about how to be our brother’s keeper in the best sense of that phrase. Living closely together makes any superficial ideas about our responsibility toward each other seem ridiculous. We know the answers are much deeper and more costly than you might typically hear. We were intrigued by Carolyn Arend’s song,…