A prayer for the eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

God. I realized as I looked for the readings for today that I can do no better, be no more honest in prayer, than the writer of Psalm 17. They may have come from conversation with you and David, but these words have been repeated to you over and over for millennia, and they are always […]

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Dear friend looking at the next item on your list

You may not read my other newsletter on Finding Words in Hard Times. The other week I wrote this: I’ve made a change in the way I end some of the emails I send. I used to end with just my name. Slowly, I started to write “peace”. Because I thought we needed it. (A couple of my […]

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Dear friends who are waiting (at least some of you):

I hear people say, “God’s got a plan” and sometimes I say, “That’s great. But I don’t know what it is. And in the meantime, this waiting is scary.” And then they say, “But you know what the Bible says.” And then they quote some version of Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have […]

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Approaching the Margins

Rich Dixon helps us see the edges of the crowd. +++ For the past few months, I’ve been doing two online classes – guided by Tim Mackie from the Bible Project – covering the first seven chapters of Matthew’s gospel. On one level, we encountered familiar stories and verses even non-Christians know something about. In another […]

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Protection from the moon by night: Psalm 121

The other day I started writing to you to offer a bit of encouragement, thinking about a phrase in Psalm 121. I quickly realized that I may have said the same thing before, and found a post from 2012 about that psalm. So I offer these words from Jon back then. +++ I’ve never talked […]

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