“It’s a book about two trees,” my student piped up in response to my query to my Classic Literature class about their first impressions of Augustine of Hippo’s Confessions, that fabled...

“Six days later” is an odd way to start a story. But it’s not the start. The story starts six days earlier, when Jesus invites his disciples on the way of...

Once again, as in Exodus, we are on a mountain. Once again we find Moses and the light of God. And again we experience a cloud of mystery that confounds our...

Sometimes our world seems pretty dark, cloaked in the shadow of racism, violence, greed, and hatred. When the earth is despoiled, when wars rage, when public discourse is fraught with fear...

“We had been eyewitnesses. . . . We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven.” What about you? What have you witnessed? What have you heard? We need not limit God’s revelation to mountaintop...

“Yahweh is sovereign” (ap). That’s relatively easy to proclaim when God is off on God’s holy mountain. But what if the holy mountain is my heart? What if the cherubim God...

God’s glory on the mountain is “like a consuming fire” (niv). Scripture often associates fire with God’s presence. But God’s fire isn’t destructive. It’s transforming. It consumes, yes, but to purify...

We long for experiences of revelation like Moses’—maybe not with all the drama and special effects, though we must admit sometimes we wish for exactly those. We want the clarity and...

This week’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel makes clear that the external work of prayer does not replace the internal work required to support it. Today’s warning is much like the Gospel...

In this passage from Deuteronomy, God makes clear that life and death, blessing and curse, are set before us. Our task in this world is to choose life again and again....