You know the kind of tired that sleep does not touch. You wake already behind. The list resets. The effort never seems to close the gap between who you are and who you think you should be. Into that weariness, Scripture speaks two words that sound like rivals. Two verses seem to pull in opposite... Continue Reading →

Luke 19.11-27 The road out of Jericho rises fast. You gain about 3,300 feet in seventeen miles, and on the western edge of the city you pass the ruins of Herod’s winter palace, last remodeled by his son Archelaus before Rome stripped him of power and sent him into exile. Every Jew walking that road... Continue Reading →

A young man comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. He has kept the commandments. He has done the things a religious man is supposed to do. Jesus tells him to sell what he has and give to the poor. The man walks away grieved, because he was very... Continue Reading →

Grief, Hope, and the Long Road Home Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “We do not want you to be uninformed, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4.13). We quote that verse often. We rarely talk about how heavy it is to live inside that hope while the losses keep... Continue Reading →

Desiderius Erasmus published The Praise of Folly in 1511 as an oration delivered by Folly herself, a goddess who praises her own gifts. The joke runs long, and readers have often stopped there, receiving the book as satire, a humanist’s wit turned on monks, popes, and pedants. But Erasmus is doing something more than lampooning... Continue Reading →