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
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 Word
Family life in antiquity was a life of insecurity though families in many parts of the world still know this insecurity well even today The warm pictures we might concoct of ancient families mdash though certainly the ancients loved their children and spouses loved each other just as families do
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
The Greek word that refers to Jesus rsquo arrival most often translated as ldquo second coming rdquo is parousia The term was adopted by Christians from the common Greek usage and imperial Roman ideology of the day in which a city prepared for and eagerly anticipated the arrival of a major po
The Word
As a child I saw the world in peculiar ways as children tend to do influenced partly by the two powerful forces of television and the Bible Growing up in the 1960s I was fairly certain from the movies and TV shows I watched that a good portion of humanity died in quicksand so I was on guard fo
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