We always talk about being enlightened in our faith, that the more we know about God, our faith and our church, the closer we are to Him. That works for a little while, but Jesus most often pushes us in the exact opposite direction. He tended to endarken people to faith much more than enlighten…
A life well lived is filling in the blanks in the course of our lives, in joy and in sorrow, until who we are, where we came from and what we are here for, is revealed to us and all those we love well.
This weekend our church remembers the day when Mary and Joseph named their child Jesus. We commonly say that this feast of naming happens eight days after Christmas, but that is an anachronism. In our church, the naming of Jesus is Christmas just as much as his birth and his baptism, they are all part…
Don’t stop with being just children of God, for we have great work to do as we grow up! I think that’s the special message which the Armenian Church and other Orthodox churches have preserved in celebrating Jesus’ baptism, as we are today, as one piece with his Christmas birth. Jesus was born, yes, this…
So here we are, and today I want to invite you into our Christmas scavenger hunt. If you want to be a Christian these days, you must go on scavenger hunts and work to recover the lasting things buried under so much stuff. For behind the inflatable lawn ornaments and the three billion dollars of…
It doesn’t matter how you learned to pray, the great equalizer is the prayer of desperation, the upside-down prayer, the prayer we pray with our backs up against the wall. And for so many people, scratch the surface of this holiday season and the New Year, and you will find times of great trial as…
This again is not a question of prohibitions, but of priorities. Have your holiday spiced latte. Put dozens of giant inflatable lawn ornaments in your yard like my neighbor. Buy a bunch of gifts for yourself and your loved ones. But make sure you don’t buy into what you are buying, don’t live your life…