HOW OFTEN DO you pray for the president? It doesn’t matter if you didn’t vote for him—maybe you should pray harder for those you didn’t want to elect!

FOR FOLKS WHO only go green on St. Patrick’s Day, it should be noted that today is Earth Day. People around the world are pleading the case for Mother Earth once more.

THE FACE OF mercy looks different for each of us. For me, it’s a middle-aged religious sister with dark curls, a round face, and soft eyes who taught at my high school 35 years ago.

The scripture stories of Easter reflect our proper orientation to this feast. These are narratives of discovery and insight, commissioning and departure. Most of all they are stories about witnessing.

THE GOSPELS ARE not biographies of Jesus. That is most clear during Holy Week, when scripture recounts the Passion in all its brutal details. Nearly one-fourth of the synoptic gospels are devoted to the Passion; when it comes to John, make that one-third.

As apostles go, Philip is not a front-runner among the original 12. Primacy goes to Peter, and lost causes to Jude.

There’s no more peculiar history than the Bible presents as the story of Israel. From start to finish we find more dubious characters than ever gathered in the works of bicentennarian Charles Dickens.

WHAT’S RELIGION ABOUT, to you? Is it about being good, getting to heaven? Or at least not going to hell in a handbasket?

IT’S NOT EASY to teach a lesson about Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his son, what Judaism calls the Akedah or “binding” of Isaac.To our modern ears the story is simply outrageous.

The Bible is one of those books that just gets better the farther you read into it. First chapter: God creates this amazing world and blesses it so that it keeps unfolding and increasing. What could be more wonderful?