What Language Shall I Borrow: Reflections on Faith

Some scriptural stories shed light on others. 01.07.2026 10:50 ↓

Stories about meals point to God’s divine action.

The Lord’s Day liturgy resembles a dance. 29.06.2026 10:51 ↓

Explaining the dance is not a substitute for joining in the dance 

We can’t easily calculate how things will fit together to shape the future. 17.06.2026 10:08 ↓

The ultimate future belongs to God.

Christian theology is communal at its very core. 10.06.2026 11:52 ↓

Community is a gift of grace.

There! Does that make everything perfectly clear? 03.06.2026 11:13 ↓

Faith is a judgment “in the light of a truth that cannot be proven.”

The new convert had been led to expect the Holy Spirit to do something dramatic. 27.05.2026 11:02 ↓

I hadn’t expected to become a believer and certainly didn’t expect or experience a dramatic or ecstatic moment.

He ascended into heaven. 20.05.2026 10:45 ↓

He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Jesus “descends into hell” to be where we are, where we have been, or where we may yet be. 14.05.2026 10:30 ↓

“We know of none whom God has wholly and exclusively abandoned to himself.  . .only of One who was lost. This One is Jesus Christ.” – Karl Barth  

To speak of holy things requires using earthbound language in creative ways. 06.05.2026 12:27 ↓

The Reformer John Calvin spoke of scripture as God’s “baby talk.” It’s not written just for intellectuals or experts.

Neither English nor any other human language has the capacity to speak directly about God. 29.04.2026 10:52 ↓

Only by improvising, juxtaposing one image alongside another, do we have any chance of glimpsing the enormous grandeur of God.

The Apostles’ Creed is a brief summary of the Christian faith. 22.04.2026 10:39 ↓

We may spend a lifetime wrestling with the creeds, challenging them and being challenged by them, while growing into them.

In baptism, we encounter the God who reaches out to lift us from the dangerous flood and pull us to safety. 15.04.2026 9:50 ↓

From early times, baptism was often likened to a new birth.

The Easter story is set in a graveyard. 08.04.2026 10:23 ↓

There’s something about a cemetery that focuses the mind.

How could the Roman soldiers possibly take seriously this Jewish carpenter they were supposed to crucify? 01.04.2026 9:59 ↓

Jesus embraces the pain without passing it on.

Easter without Holy Week can be dangerous to one’s spiritual health. 25.03.2026 9:09 ↓

Jesus turns the old status systems upside down.

The American Funeral 19.03.2026 9:29 ↓

The American funeral, as Tom Long has so ably pointed out, has undergone a process of transformation in recent years to the point that it has become more and more remote from a Christian approach to life or death.

Rehearsing the grand homecoming that is to come. The sure sign of home: sharing food together. 11.03.2026 11:23 ↓

“Then, people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God” (Luke 13:29).

Life isn’t fair, and we’re outraged, because it seems as though it ought to be fair. 05.03.2026 11:39 ↓

Grace is amazing!

What does what we do in worship say about God, God’s character, and God’s disposition toward us? 26.02.2026 10:26 ↓

In worship, I see further out than I can see anywhere else.

In Scripture, “evil” always has a face. The adversary, the tempter, the fallen angel reenters the Biblical story at many points. 19.02.2026 11:14 ↓

Evil is subtle, alluring, always in disguise, and shrewd.

There are afflictions that don’t precisely fit the usual diagnostic patterns. 12.02.2026 10:31 ↓

The Christian faith is a healing movement.

Fundamentalism isn’t the only option for serious faith. 05.02.2026 9:32 ↓

Becoming fluent in the “grammar of the gospel.”

Preaching is meant to be a “sacramental act.” 29.01.2026 10:55 ↓

There are some things that can’t be understood by reasoned explanations alone.

Indiscriminate Baptism 22.01.2026 10:23 ↓

Surely we don’t expect parents to perjure themselves in public!

Jesus was baptized alongside “sinners” 15.01.2026 10:53 ↓

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down. . .”