OUR HOUSE was broken into recently while my family and I slept soundly in our beds. We woke when we heard noise on the back porch, but it was too late. The thief was gone along with a purse filled with cash, credit cards, and keys. A hundred "if onlys" went through our heads.
We knew eventually it would happen again, but we never knew exactly when. When we moved into our bungalow we soon discovered that most of the basements on our block would flood whenever the rains fell too quickly--including ours.
Research tells us that more people suffer from light deprivation during winter months than we realize. Soon the sun will be at its lowest point in the sky. Dawn will come later and darkness will occur earlier. People who suffer from the lack of light quite often do not realize what is happening because the process of growing darkness creeps up.
The bible presents the spiritual quest in a number of metaphorical ways: as a journey, as a race, as a banquet. Today Isaiah portrays it as "climbing the Lord's mountain." This is a helpful image--climbing to loftier and loftier heights in a sometimes arduous trek.
Michael Ramsey, the late Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, once said, "No resurrection, no Christianity." His words echoed those of Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians--"if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain" (15:14)--and point to the fact that without faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and ultimately of all who die in Christ, Christianity doesn't mean much.
When my daughters were little and I would read them fairy tales we'd often come across lands where the king was either bad or missing in action.
Our parish sings a wonderful Communion hymn titled "Bread to Share." Its upbeat melody and exchange between cantor and congregation led me to believe it was an updated version of an old spiritual.
Human beings have a hard time handling power well. In the past couple of years we've had ample evidence of that in disclosures of how certain unscrupulous CEOs and chairmen of the board of large companies abused their positions of power, arrogantly looted the resources of the organizations they were charged to manage, and brazenly lied about it all to shareholders and legal authorities alike.
Jesus' words "by your perseverance you will secure your lives" call to mind the experiences of birds as they make a seasonal migration. Multiple times a year various species of birds travel thousands of miles in response to changes in food availability, habitat, or climate.
One summer, years ago, I was an activities counselor in charge of 16 young boys, ages 5 to 10. I would often load them into a big van and off we'd go on fun adventures. Joey, a high-school kid from the same childcare institution, was assigned to help me, and thank God for that, because while I drove he had the unenviable task of keeping the boys in line.