DEVOTIONAL: Today marks the first day of spring, the season of rebirth. During spring, the Earth’s axis is tilted toward the sun and daylight gradually lengthens. This begins the winter thaw, causing the earth to warm and new life to emerge. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: In The Message‘s interesting version of Ephesians 2:1-10, it talks about our old life and says: “you filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.” I associate this with how polluted and contaminated our environment is becoming. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: As I sit down to write a devotional here in a library in Baltimore, I wonder what I will do for the rest of my life. What do I have to give the world that the other 200 people in this building haven’t already given? Over and again I come up short, thinking I have no place to go, nothing else to learn; that my peers have all done it better, or else I would have a job just like they do. I wonder what God has in store for me if everyone around me seems to already live the life I want for myself. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: Lent is a season of waiting. Like the people of God following Moses through the wilderness, I grow impatient. The constant reminders that Jesus is going to die wear on me, perhaps similarly to the ways in which miles and miles of walking, dry ground, heavy heat and miserable food wore on the people following Moses. (more…)

THIS WEEK’S THEME: By grace you have been saved

DEVOTIONAL: What was I doing in one of San Salvador’s most dangerous, crime-ridden neighborhoods after sunset? Determined to use the public transportation system, I had passed by a line of taxis that could have quickly taken me back to my host family’s urban neighborhood after a day trip to a rural Salvadoran community. Instead, I took the bus I’d been told would take me to the city center — but I didn’t realize it was on its evening schedule. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: I can distinctly remember the accompanying picture in my children’s Bible from first grade about when Jesus cleanses (condemns) the temple. I remember considering what it would look like if Jesus came and overturned our tables at one of my church’s fellowship meals. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: What is wisdom?

Wisdom does not always accompany good grades. Walker Percy once said, “You can get all A’s, and still flunk life.” I can testify to the truth of that statement, and you probably can too. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: In this Lenten season the economy dominates the headlines. People are losing jobs and houses and investments. Politicians and experts suggest various solutions, take decisive action. But no end is in sight. Companies that seemed impregnable a short while ago have suddenly collapsed like a house of cards. Where there was faith in the wisdom of markets to ensure our prosperity and secure our posterity, there is now fear and distrust. (more…)

DEVOTIONAL: When I was 14, my younger brother and I spent the summer down south with our cousins. We were city kids, and that summer in Mom’s rural hometown presented to us a different way of life. As is the nature of small towns, everyone seemed to know everyone. I had only to walk down the road to have a chorus of people greet me by name, one by one as I passed by their front porches. Even though I was a visitor, by knowing my family, they knew me. They also took on the responsibility of teaching me the mores of the community, like the practice of addressing adults as ma’am and sir; walking slowly, taking time to visit. Paying attention. (more…)

THIS WEEK’S THEME: My rock and my redeemer

DEVOTIONAL: I have been given many presents over the years, but one gift in particular is especially important to me. It is a hymnal given to me by my church the spring before I went off to college. Books given as presents often have a special message written on the inside that offers word of advice, but my hymnal does not. Instead, everyone in my congregation signed their name in the margins of their favorite hymn. When singing a hymn, I often think of those whose favorite hymn it is and say a short prayer for them. (more…)