Anabaptist and Quaker essays, sermons, and other writings
How has being busy distracted from my faith life? As a public school teacher, my day is packed with decisions. The most common types of daily decisions include when to help students, making curriculum improvements, and which professional development topics to explore. And several other types of decisions are added […]
The coming of the new year, from New Year’s Eve throughout the entire month of January, is always a challenging time for me which requires taking some extra time for contemplation and grounding. As someone who grew up in a fundamentalist and apocalyptic tradition, the end of each year often […]
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” 16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying […]
For as long as I can remember, my mother and father have had an incredible ability to identify any bird that they see. This includes all of the typical songbirds you find in rural Pennsylvania, chickadees, wrens, robins, etc; but also the occasional red-tailed hawk, falcon perched on a power […]
Philippians 4:4 – “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say rejoice!” We sing songs about this verse, we memorize it, we embroider it on pillows and hang it in picture frames. Yet like any familiar verse in scripture, we can gain a deeper appreciation for this text as […]
My wife and I celebrated our twenty-first anniversary in late November this year. As I reflect, I continue to thank God for his faithfulness in our lives. I wouldn’t want to say that it has been a bed of roses either. Without God’s intervention, there have been challenges that we […]
The following essay is part one of a series. Please look out for part two on February 17. I have observed while listening to a number of white members of the Church of the Brethren in sermons, articles, and conversations, a tendency for some to articulate a vision of evangelism […]
Wrestling Patience I am being taught patience. When my first few kidney stones came around, I struggled to muster the strength to silence the pain in my body. In all of my eight years of life, I had never known the world as such a painful place. I had never […]
In the beginning as God created, a wind –the spirit of God swept— hovered—over the face of the deep. The first people—Eve and Adam– “heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze…” A swoosh of grass? Crunch of leaves? Abraham […]
When I was invited to write something “equipping”, I’ll admit that I was a little stumped. When it comes to writing these sorts of long-form articles, I tend to struggle a bit with keeping myself focused on one topic or idea. I have an interest in justice, an interest in […]