I assure you that anyone who gives you a drink of water because you belong to me will certainly receive a reward. Mark 9:41 The

In late October, a gunman opened fire on a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 people in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in United States history.

Benedict Joseph Labre was an unemployed transient who begged around Europe for 13 years, eating refuse that other people didn’t want and clothing himself in

“Did you know that the phrase ‘daily bread’ in the Lord’s Prayer really means ‘supersubstantial bread’? Like, supernatural?” This is the sort of tidbit that

On a leafy Sunday morning, the girls, adorned in lacy white dresses, and the boys, decked out in immaculate suits and ties, excitedly joined their

“A sacrament is when something holy happens. It is transparent time, time which you can see through to something deep inside time. Generally speaking, Protestants

If we must refer to Advent, then let us hear the Palestinian cry for deliverance from bondage. Both ideologically and municipally, Israel considers Jerusalem to

American visitors to the Holy Land often “run where Jesus walked,” a Palestinian friend from Bethlehem likes to say. One need only watch the crush

1,284.5 miles: The distance from my front door to Charlottesville, Virginia. In the second weekend of August, I woke to the sound of a crop-duster

“Sawubona.” This Zulu word for hello is much more than a simple greeting. Translated, its intention means “I see you, and by seeing you, I

T.S. Elliot wrote that at the end of all our journeying we will arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

VISIONS OF AMEN: THE EARLY LIFE AND MUSIC OF OLIVIER MESSIAEN STEPHEN SCHLOESSER EERDMANS, 2014 $50 570 PAGES CONCURRENTLY RELEASED AUDIO RECORDING: MESSIAEN, VISIONS OF

In April 2014, Thomas Piketty’s tome on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, was released in English translation, featuring 577 pages (minus the footnotes) and

We’ve all heard a story that goes something like this: In the beginning God created a beautiful and perfect universe. To crown his creation, he

In late April two years ago, I changed the tires on my van, installing the summer tires once again – not such a memorable event

We stepped out of the car into the grassy, gravel courtyard of the evangelical Ethiopian church. We were very late for worship; today was the

As a professor at Northwestern College, I don’t find it uncommon for my students to raise questions or share perspectives that motivate me to rethink

Humans have an aversion to death, and rightfully so. Death is not our friend; it is the enemy. Unfortunately, death is also a familiar enemy,

I suppose everyone has a guilty pleasure. Mine happens to be 80s action flicks. Recently, on one of those rare evenings that occur roughly quarterly,

The crab apple trees were in full bloom, pink and teeming with life. They were full of spring’s best promises: Winter had gone, and new

Last year was difficult for the congregation I serve as pastor. While deaths and funerals are regular parts of congregational life, we suffered more deaths

There is a growing consensus among medical professionals, historians and theologians about a troubling trend: Modern Americans do not think about or reflect upon dying

When I was a boy, my grandmother told me stories of heaven. I remember her telling me in vivid detail about Percy Collett. His story,

Women in public Christian ministry is a historic distinctive of evangelicalism. It is historic because evangelical women have been fulfilling their callings in public ministry

Confession time: I have a guilty pleasure. Some very smart, very sophisticated people I know watch reality TV. The ridiculously staged, morally questionable, emotionally manipulative

“When children expect something it is impossible to give only part of oneself to them.” ­­– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, quoted in Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Theologian,

Proverbs echo in the wind tunnel of history. We cannot help but hear reverberations of past wisdom in present-day prose. In the Manipulus Florum (“handful

We Americans seem lately to be turning nearly every aspect of life into a competition in which somebody must win and somebody must lose. Many

When I wrote my most recent statement on how faith informs my work in language and literature, I chose this prompt from Calvin College’s faculty

When Israel asked for a king, the prophet Samuel warned them that the pomp and power of kingship would come at a high cost. A

Americans of a certain age can think back to the days of their childhood and recall how “Cold War science” was built into their political

A couple of months ago, philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff made big news when he delivered a speech at Neland Avenue Christian Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan,

“You just can’t understand.” It frustrated me when my daughter would tell me, “You just don’t get it. You can’t get it.” I remember the

Editor’s note: The following is adapted from a chapel talk at Northwestern College, Orange City, Iowa. A salesman driving through rural Iowa has car trouble.

In Christianity’s first centuries, we find vivid depictions of the cross as a fishhook or mousetrap that catches Satan in the act of destroying human

Editors’ note: In recent years, there has been increasing talk about the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper as a feast of welcome and hospitality. Perhaps

Sacraments are not important in our age of active shooters, terrorist bombings, NFL players sitting at the “wrong” time, reality-star politicians and constant reconstruction of

“Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.” – Colossians 3:2 Americans have long expressed concern about the character of their

I am a political science professor at a Christian university with ties to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a denomination in the Reformed tradition. My own

As of this writing Donald Trump is the presumptive United States presidential nominee for the Republican Party. While it is unclear why Trump has enough

I had no idea why tears so abruptly filled my eyes. I was crying before I understood why I might be crying. But the sense

In a recent article in the Christian Century, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and Thomas Albert Howard discussed the appropriate ways for Protestants to celebrate the forthcoming

Six hundred one years ago – July 6, 1415 – in the German city of Constance, a Roman Catholic council declared Jan Hus, the Czech

As a scientist, I find reading Scripture can sometimes be difficult. I believe that the Bible is the living word of God, a text written

In his monograph Called to the Life of the Mind, Richard Mouw recalls teaching his first philosophy class, which included the thought of the philosopher

When one of the authors met little Kunthy and Chanda in Cambodia, they were 11-and 12-year-old girls living as children should live – going to

In 1974, two scholars were scheduled to deliver prestigious lectures on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The political theorist Hannah Arendt, an American citizen, traveled

“And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in

Because I did my doctoral dissertation with Karl Barth at the University of Basel in Switzerland, it might seem strange that I had an even

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][text_output] Almost two decades ago, Bill Clinton, whose skill at fitting gesture to national mood at times rivaled Ronald Reagan’s, famously proposed a series

“Come! Live in the light! Shine with the joy and the love of the Lord! We are called to be light for the kingdom, to

“If the church is ever to flourish again, one must begin by instructing the young.” – Martin Luther “Welcome to the Sticky Faith Cohort Summit!

“To an angel, art must seem a very foreign thing indeed.” —Nicholas Wolterstorff in Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Eerdmans, 1980) Imagine this:

In the last house where Karl Barth lived and worked and finally died, a charming residence on Bruderholzallee in Basel, there are several portraits that

The unexpected news that Netflix had produced and released 13 episodes of Daredevil filled me with a mixture of nostalgic hope and earned skepticism. I

Twice in my reading life I have come upon descriptions of communal singing that have aroused in me a deep longing to join with the

When I went off to Bible college, all I wanted to do was serve God – in youth ministry or as a missionary, or (if

Theology, it is said, arises out of the lived and shared experiences of people within their cultures. Generally speaking, in Africa south of the Sahara,

In Matthew’s telling of the feeding of the five thousand, he relates that after the crowd has eaten and were satisfied, the disciples gathered up

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex

Since the 2nd century, Christians have described the telos of God’s creation and redemption of humanity in terms of deification, or divinization. Even though it

Luke’s gospel witness to the life of Jesus from Nazareth comes to an astonishing and climactic ending. As Jesus ascends into the heavens, his followers

This past January in Ecuador, in the middle of a conversation about Darwin and the Galapagos Islands, my taxi driver looked me in the eye

A cancer diagnosis occurs in a moment, but the losses it brings come in slowly yet steadily, like a tide pushing against the shoreline, again

The train hugged the Hudson River before crossing the bridge over Spuyten Duyvil onto Manhattan Island as my friend asked in a tone I’d become

W. Dale Brown, put in front of an audience, was always disarming: smart, artless, arch – and Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing put

I somehow managed to earn a bachelor of arts in literature without ever encountering Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote until a high school production of

Part I: Holberg In all the years of our long friendship, there was never a week that went by when Dale Brown and I did

That Abraham Kuyper was a racist, following the conventions of his time, is something that no neo-Calvinist would deny. His views on race and his

Russel Botman, Reformed theologian and university president, died on June 28, 2014, in Stellenbosch, South Africa. A 60-year-old dying in his sleep is not typically

It was a summer of lattes. Every morning I woke at the crack of dawn, donned black pants and a green apron and drove in

The Story cannot be told without reference to water: The waters of creation, the flood, the Red Sea, water from the rock, Jesus in the