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We're coming to the end--at least I hope we're coming to the end--of a series of scandals involving America's corporate leadership. CEOs, corporate boards, top management everywhere--they have all come under suspicion, if not investigation, for their leadership practices.  No one paid much attention during the roaring 90s, but when the economy soured and the stock market tanked, suddenly corporate leadership had a lot of explaining to do. Roman Catholic leaders still seem not to grasp the depth of the anger…

The Bible tells us that we are to anticipate a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness (2 Peter 3:13). In this new heaven and new earth we read that we will plant vineyards and eat their fruit, build houses and dwell in them, and that we will long enjoy the works of our hands (Isaiah 65:22-23). Before we call to God, he will answer us, and while we are still speaking he will hear us (Isaiah…

Even though I attempted a sermon on this text nearly thirty years ago, it is still not without fear and trembling that I attempt to make an explanation of it now. Because under the surface of these beautiful and memorable words which have brought comfort and peace to untold thousands of penitent sinners, there lies the never completely penetrable depth of God's mysterious dealings with a race of men estranged from Him. To consider this text at all is to…

At four, I am visiting my Aunt Minnie's farm for the day. Cobs crackle in the black kitchen stove. The wind whines above the mutter of thunder."Hailstones!" calls my cousin Hank from the porch.Hailstones? I taste the word. Hail . . . stones. What are hail . . . stones?I join his two brothers in running to the porch. We peer at green-black sky, whipping branches, and falling balls of ice.Balls of ice--hailstones!Thunder cracks. My ears hurt. "Wow, that was…

Of the making of books (and films and recordings) by and about Dietrich Bonhoeffer there is no end, apparently. The Lutheran pastor, theologian and political resister who died at the hands of the Nazis in the closing weeks of the Second World War has seldom been out of the theological limelight since the posthumous publication of his Letters and Papers from Prison in the early 1950's. His close friend, biographer and literary executor, Eberhard Bethge, is now deceased, but a…