Christmas Eve – The Misnomer of an Overcrowded Inn
Memories embedded with romantic pictures of Jesus’ birth are quite impossible to rewrite. Retold by Christmas pageants, reminded by carols and pictures replenish what we think happened at Jesus’ birth. I know it so well I hardly need a sermon, picture, movie or song to remind me of a pregnant Mary riding a donkey, about … Continue reading
Why God allows Evil?
“The Cry,” Munich’s painting of a young woman’s primeval scream standing on a bridge in a sunlit day came to mind as I witnessed unbelievable horror and tried to feel the unimagined suffering of parents as they raced to the elementary school in Newtown Connecticut to find their children. Questions about “who” died quickly shifted … Continue reading
What Newtown and Bethlehem have in Common
“Twenty children killed.” It is a similar refrain to the early life of Jesus. King Herod ordered children under two killed in the Judean village of Bethlehem when he heard from the Persian travellers that a “king of the Jews” was to be born. Historians estimate that in this tiny village some twenty were hacked … Continue reading
A refugee camp near Syrian Border
December 2012 War and suffering takes on a different look when seen through the eyes of those fleeing mass killing. I spent part of an afternoon in a tent (part of a camp of 40,000 Syrian refugees) with a Syrian family. Wanting to tell me of their hopes, we shared from a plate of dates … Continue reading