Category: Advancing the Kingdom

The tabernacle was empty, its vigil lamp extinguished. Hope had abandoned the sanctuary. An oppressive emptiness replaced it.  I don’t remember to what it referred, but this mysterious passage appeared recently on my computer screen like some dark prophecy. On the same day I read…

This description appears in a real estate ad I recently read. The intention is clear and, one assumes, innocent. But, the words do provoke the question: can paradise be gated? People have different opinions about the existence of paradise, and believers have varying concepts of…

Some readers may remember the chorus to the song “My Grandfather’s Clock”: ‘Ninety years without slumbering, tick tock, tick tock, his life’s seconds numbering, tick tock, tick tock, but it stopped short never to go again when the old man died’.  This refrain came to…

The simultaneous appearance this year of the beginning of Hannukah and the fourth Sunday of Advent invites Christians to reflect on our Jewish roots. St. Paul’s arboreal image in Romans 11 comes to mind: the wild branch of Christianity is grafted to and nourished by…

“And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions” (Joel 3:1) These words are ascribed to the…

“Use it or lose it”. It isn’t only the prospect of caducity that brings this adage to mind. I think of it when I reflect on my teenage grandchildren’s vanishing skill at cursive writing. Though taught it in early grades, they have no occasion to…

Let’s keep it just between you and I. If you winced at this opening line more than likely you’re in that certain age bracket that was taught grammar in school. No doubt you learned how to diagram a sentence and were drilled in the roles…

As the adage has it, ignorance is bliss. This may be so when related to the innocence of young children who, still unexposed to evil, are content in their trustful openness to the world and its wonders. For the rest of us, though, ignorance is…

It’s still there. The Charcoal Pit on the Concord Pike has been a constant. As teenagers we made a ritual of going there after Saturday night movies for hamburgers (pre-MacDonalds) and milkshakes. I recall once we gathered there on a Friday after seeing some film.…

God is not directed by history. He is its author and guide.   But for the active role of Providence in our lives history would neither exist nor perdure. We today accept with beguiled resignation the label of ‘postmodern’.  With an arrogance rivalling that of…