To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Every day during this season of Lent we’re looking at the miracles of Jesus – his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels. Almost every year of my childhood in Indiana, my parents and brothers and I piled into the family station wagon and headed south for Florida. Our… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here Every day during this season of Lent we’re looking at the miracles of Jesus – his spectacular displays of supernatural power that are reported in the Gospels. On March 6, 2015, Jennifer Groesbeck, a 25-year-old single mom, was driving after dusk from her parents’ home in Salem, Utah, toward her home in… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here If you’ve been a Morning Reflections reader for a few years, you know that on Ash Wednesday we typically use a Q&A format to address some of the questions associated with this first day of Lent. What’s different this year? Check out the section that deals with the special topic we’ll be… Read more »
To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here What is God’s greatest miracle? Is it the parting of the Red Sea? Feeding thousands of hungry people with a few loaves and fish? Raising Jesus from the dead? Interestingly, we can make the case that the most compelling of all God’s miracles is the miracle of restraint. Why doesn’t… Read more »
If you’re a parent, and your child is seriously ill, nothing else matters. You would move heaven and earth to find the right doctor. You would pay any price for the right medicine. If you could, you would gladly take her place. In the case of a synagogue leader named Jairus, it meant tracking down the controversial teacher from Galilee… Read more »
For the four weeks leading up to and going beyond Easter, we’re looking at the life of Peter. Because he’s so often at the center of both the brightest and darkest moments in the Gospels, he has always been a source of hope and inspiration for those endeavoring to follow Jesus. The word “miracle” is somewhat overworked these days. We speak… Read more »
In 1963, as a young, newly minted sociologist, Rodney Stark was given the chance of a lifetime. On behalf of the Survey Research Center of the University of California-Berkeley, he was granted the privilege of designing the first-ever major survey of religion in America. Stark intended to ask randomly selected church members, among other things, if they had ever had… Read more »
Several years ago I read about a megachurch that presented “Feed the 5,000 Day.” The first 5,000 people who showed up on a particular Sunday morning received a free fish sandwich – bread and fish, get it? – passed out by Ronald McDonald himself. Large American congregations are nothing if not inventive in their efforts to keep crowds of spiritual… Read more »
His name was Tisquantum and he was a member of the Pawtuxet tribe of coastal Massachusetts. The English colonists, who got to know him well, could never pronounce his name correctly. They called him Squanto. It’s safe to say that apart from him we wouldn’t be celebrating a Pilgrim-themed Thanksgiving today. Historians assure us that the familiar story of the… Read more »