“Hail, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” The Angel startled Mary. Her prayers cracked open with the unexpected visit. Her mind swirled with the greeting of high honor. No one, not even Joseph, called her ‘favored one.’ She forced herself to focus as the angel kept speaking. “The Holy Spirit will come upon […]
Why I Keep Returning To Palestine
by on October 23, 2019 Leave a Comment
Why do I keep returning to Palestine? Why, for the third year in a row, do I pack and board planes and change dollars into shekels? Why do I keep coming back to this place, and not Zanzibar or Paris or Morocco? I remember a conversation I had once with the then-U.S. ambassador to Burundi […]
Liberating Hagar
by on April 8, 2019 Leave a Comment
Hagar gets the short end of the stick. Sunday School lessons describe her position as a servant, waiting hand and foot on Abraham and Sarah in Canaan. When barrenness got the best of Sarah, she eyed Hagar who was ripe for the picking. So she sent the servant into Abraham’s tent. This is how Ishmael, […]
Glance with Compassion and Honor, Not Contempt
by on February 11, 2019 1 Comment
2019. Tension brewed like a bubbling witch’s cauldron on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. A handful of Black Hebrew Israelites yelled at a bunch of high school students who meandered over after participating in the March for Life earlier that day. The students took the bait, responding to taunts with words and gestures of […]
Our Confidence is in the Shalom-Maker
by on January 14, 2019 1 Comment
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. In the early days of the New Year I stumbled upon Psalm 46. I was thinking about how God disarms our violence, and I landed on this psalm on this January morning. But here the song—for it is a song that celebrates the […]
