Joy: A camera flip away?
The Christmas story flips the camera…to places hardly anyone was looking for joy.
The real kind of ‘thoughts and prayers’
Properly understood, prayer is not just something that accompanies action but is embedded with it and is the most meaningful foundation for it.
One year and counting—Christian Citizen reflections on the coronavirus pandemic
On March 4, 2020 we published the first of many articles in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Today, we mark the occasion with this series of excerpts from articles published over the past year. They are a reminder of trials and tribulations experienced and challenges that remain. As with all that we publish, we hope these excerpts will inspire, encourage, and challenge our readers to bring a greater measure of justice, mercy, and faith into our communities and world.
Lent 2021 is the perfect time to relearn confession, penance, and ‘costly grace’
Lent comes around every year in the Christian calendar as a time of reflection, self-denial, and confession. It has traditionally been a time of some kind of fasting or abstaining from certain things. If there’s ever a year to rediscover Isaiah’s words about ‘the fast God has chosen,’ it’s this year: “…to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?” (Isa. 58:6 NIV). In particular, maybe this Lenten season is the time to get serious about loosening our chains of racism.
From our writers—first thoughts on last week’s attack on the Capitol
Following the attack on the Capitol one week ago today, we asked our contributing authors to share a brief reflection or excerpt from what they were planning to say to their congregations in sermons, pastoral letters, and prayers.