Voices
John W. Martens is a professor of theology and director of the Centre for Christian Engagement at St. Mark’s College at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C.
The Word
Remember when you were a child how little understanding you had of how things happened if they would happen or when they would happen When you were waiting for something you wanted like Christmas for example excited anticipation fused with a vague sense of time to make waiting a consuming reali
The Word
The passage from the Book of Wisdom about God ldquo overlooking rdquo sins has a wry humor when juxtaposed with little Zacchaeus too small in stature to be seen That is not true of course for no matter where Zacchaeus was standing hidden among the crowd or walking away from Jesus God ldquo
The Word
The baby Jesus still grabs our attention and the sweet obsession of the gypsy Yerko in Robertson Davies rsquo s The Rebel Angels for the ldquo Bebby Jesus rdquo reveals that deep attraction After a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where Yerko sees a medieval cr che scene he
The Word
I am not alone in considering Jesus rsquo parable of the dishonest or unrighteous manager or steward oikonomos the most difficult complex and confusing of all Jesus rsquo parables The reason for this is simple in the first verse of the parable after determining that the manager is ldquo
The Word
lsquo The apostles said to the Lord lsquo Increase our faith rsquo rdquo What rsquo s the equation for increasing faith ldquo The Lord replied lsquo If you had faith the size of a mustard seed you could say to this mulberry tree ldquo Be uprooted and planted in the sea rdquo and it wo
The Word
There is a bittersweet gentleness to Otis Redding rsquo s classic song ldquo Sitting on the Dock of the Bay rdquo as the singer looks homeward to Georgia while ldquo wastin rsquo time rdquo on the San Francisco docks Everyone has experienced a longing for home whether at summer camp as a chi
The Word
There is an inherent tension in Christianity between the indicative and the imperative what we are and what we are intended to be between the present and the future the life we are now living and the world to come If we focus only on this world or only on the world to come the Christian life is
The Word
When you rsquo re lost it rsquo s good to be missed it rsquo s even better to be found At the heart of spiritual lostness though is our collusion in our own absence People are not inanimate objects like coins things that can fall unwittingly into corners nor are they like sheep animals with
The Good Word
Part of what has been keeping me off the blogosphere has been a collection of issues such as illness two bad colds in quick succession the SBL Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meetings and Thanksgiving This is enough to grind writing for a blog to a standstill but there is still another
The Good Word
This is the eighth and final entry in the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians Bible Junkies Commentary You can find the first entry here nbsp In the first entryI discussed introductory matters such as the origin of the Church in Thessalonica its early history with Paul Silvanus and Timo