happy are those whose hearts are set (sermon)

In the fall of 2013, I took a travel-writing class, and as part of that class, went on my first walking pilgrimage. A bunch of unruly and excited young adults—IT majors and business majors and fashion majors—laced up our hiking books and grabbed our notebooks and boarded a plan to Madrid for spring break. We…

Love came down at Christmas (sermon)

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” In the name of... Seeing is believing—that’s the expression you’ve heard before, the expression my mother used when I didn’t quite manage to clean my room, or,…

The Lord has done great things for us (sermon on Ps. 126)

And God stepped out on spaceAnd he looked around and saidI’m lonelyI’ll make me a world So begins ‘The Creation’, that famous poem by James Weldon Johnson, which ends with the creation of man, which portrays a God who contemplates the vast expanse of interstellar space, and says I’m lonelyI’ll make me a world A…