When bread is blessed and broken in the name of Jesus, scripture says, things happen. Jesus is remembered. A new covenant is celebrated. All are satisfied. And there is much left over.

I was on a train in Italy with college friends, including the woman who would become my wife. It was a slow train that stopped at every town and village between Florence and Rome. People boarded the train loaded with bundles and baskets and children in hand.

Often, no matter how dire their circumstances, a beautifully peaceful look will wash over the face of a nursing mother. These women report an overwhelming sense of joy in nurturing and nourishing their young.

Invite people to think of some of the best times they've spent as a family (with family defined as those who matter most to you). Odds are that a meal is involved in some way in many of those memories.

THE PSALM for this Trinity Sunday praises the wonderful Creator. For centuries theologians from Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint Bonaventure to modern thinkers have linked creation and the Holy Trinity.

THE EMPLOYEES at an international publishing house specializing in encyclopedias and world data were just as one would imagine—culturally diverse, well-educated, bookish, and respectful of others’ beliefs and social mores.

WE IN AMERICA like our heroes, and we especially like them to be bigger than life. Like the faces of the presidents carved on the side of Mt. Rushmore or the hallowed memorials in our nation’s capital, we tend to enshrine them on a scale that is also larger than life.

To gain wisdom we need to assume what’s often known as a “beginner’s mind.”

The Spirit of God goes out to renew the face of the earth, the psalm says. That renewing Spirit is present in the surprising connection between the desperate region of Sudan’s Western Darfur and a place called Ginghamsburg Church in the Ohio town of Tipp City.

MARTIN MARTY, renowned church historian, was giving a talk recently on Martin Luther to a packed house filled with friends, colleagues, and students of theology. Five minutes into the lecture a man in the front row called out a question.