peace

Those of us in violence-plagued neighborhoods look forward to winter's reprieve. Our teenagers understand Advent waiting all too well.

If Martin Luther King Jr. had written a book exposing his personal failings, it would have been seen as undermining his cause. But Leymah Gbowee does not want to be thought of as a hero.

It is difficult for Jews to talk about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. It's also difficult for Christians to talk about it with Jews.

The promise of Isaiah 65 is that God is doing a new thing. What's taking God so long?

"I have to tell you about Maggy," my colleague said excitedly. He had just returned from meetings with church leaders in east-central Africa. "Love made me an inventor," Marguerite "Maggy" Barankitse had told the group. The more she talked, the more my colleagues wanted to see Maggy's Maison Shalom (House of Peace), near Ruyigi, Burundi. There, after the horrors of civil war 15 years ago, she has rebuilt her village. It's an extraordinary resurrection story.

The disciples are afraid, so they lock their doors. I do the same.

Christ as weapon, Paul?

Isaiah gives us a vision of what the new anointed one will be like, what gifts he will have and how he will be someone run by Elsewhere—not by the criteria of groupthink, of lobbying groups. His criteria will give voice to the meek who have no voice and don’t know how to use a voice. His words will become the criteria for everything, much to the dismay of the wicked.