You might have seen this heart-warming story last week. Joshua Dyer, a 14 year old boy from Herefordshire, England, was asked in school to write a poem for a local veterans group concert, part of the Remembrance Day observance this year. He came up with a short piece called “A...
Why is Zacchaeus short? If you’re not familiar with the story, the gospel of Luke records that Jesus was passing through Jericho and the local chief tax collector, a guy named Zacchaeus, comes out to see him with the rest of the crowds. Jesus meets him and invites himself over...
Oh, Jesus. Sometimes you say the darndest things. It’s another one of those tricky parables, a simple story on the surface, but with a deeper, more powerful question to wonder about. We’re still travelling with Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and he’s been teaching important lessons with these short,...
There’s a federal election in Canada very soon. Please be sure to vote, if you haven’t already. That’s all, just please vote. I won’t say more about that, but I will just add that I think the gospel story this week is rather timely. And I’ll certainly talk about that....
“Come, you thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest-home! All is safely gathered in, safe before the storms begin.” It’s Thanksgiving this week, in this part of the world anyway, and these words by Henry Alford are probably going to be sung a lot. They’re the opening lines of...
Lately, we’ve been making our way through the Gospel of Luke. We’re mid-gospel, Jesus has turned towards Jerusalem (spoiler alert: I won’t tell you what happens there) and, on his way there with the disciples, there’s some pretty dense teaching with a lot of stories. Parables of the the Lost...
I’ve been known to express some pretty progressive, even radical, ideas here. As always, I hope that I’ve also been clear that, in sharing my beliefs, I have no expectation that others will share them, nor that anyone would agree or understand them as “right” just because I said them....
This column should probably come with a Content Warning: minister writing about money. Relax, I won’t be asking for it, telling you to give it to the church or telling you it’s bad. Jesus never did any of those things so why would I. I also won’t be reminding you...
The pharisees and the Temple authorities were right, you know. Jesus hung out with the worst people. It’s true. In their eyes, at least. And those good ol’ pharisees, the keepers of Hebrew Law, even tried to help Jesus realize that. They’d try and help by pointing out that some...
Remember playing with Play-Doh when you were a kid? Or, if your parents or school teacher made their own, it was play dough. It was, and still is, a lot of fun. You could make some amazing sculptures, pottery and other cool stuff with it. At least, it probably looked...