Charity

I am a pastor in Pennsylvania. And I appreciate my brothers who are laboring hard to understand how to handle the governor’s guidelines. As an aside, guidelines are almost a euphemism for dictatorial power. On March 6 th Governor Wolf declared a state of emergency and placed himself in charge of...

Let me begin with an affirmation. The Gospel Matters. Some will immediately accuse me of being antagonistic. After all, Stan Wischnowski ran a headline that read “Buildings Matter” and he found himself without a job. [1] But I am not an antagonist. I am a minister of the Gospel. Others will ask, “...

As a pastor, I am for unity. It is part and parcel of the fabric of what it means to be a Christian. I am united to Christ by virtue of the Spirit of unity indwelling me. The Apostle Paul clearly enjoins every believer to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bound of peace. There is...

Editor's note : In a previous post , Megan Taylor introduced us to the great American theologian Jonathan Edwards. She directed us to consider the Small Pox vaccination which ended his life. In this post. Megan once again enlists the great theologian, this time as a guide for us in our use of time...

Lydia Mackenzie Falconer Miller – An Inquisitive Woman Some time ago, I wrote an article about Hugh Miller, a Scottish geologist and author who was greatly esteemed by both scientists and common readers during the perplexing times of the Scottish religious Disruption and of Darwin’s new scientific...

The more we have explored the theme of grace as it unfolds in different ways throughout Scripture, the more we have discovered its variegated beauty and its far-reaching implications for our lives as Christians. It is more pervasive than we often imagine and, as we have noted in an earlier post,...

In the Western, North American, capitalist culture from which I write, we have nearly no experience of interaction that isn’t based in some way on a transactional relationship. All of life is seen as give and take. But in our society, we seek to get as much as we are able, while giving as little as...

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753-1784) and her Sovereign God Whatever moved the Wheatleys to buy the little slave that had just arrived from Africa, it was not her physical strength. Small, frightened and skinny, she looked too frail to do much work. The Wheatleys’ choice might have been due to the fact...

“Would You But Permit Me to Cast Myself at Your Feet?” – Marriage Proposal of 18 th -Century Ministers This is a sequel to an article I wrote a few years ago about some marriage proposals by 16 th -century Protestant Reformers. [1] Most of those were practical, from Heinrich Bullinger’s (1504–1575...