29th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C, RCL)

Monastic vows sound familiar to anyone who's been to a wedding. In both marriage and celibacy, we promise to be faithful.

Among the most stimulating books I've read recently is Samuel Wells's Be Not Afraid, from which I picked up the phrase repeated several times in my current lectionary columns for the Century: "What's God up to?" This is the question that counts.

Like Jacob and Esau, my mother and my aunt met each other one day after 20 years of estrangement.

Recently, I learned that a young couple I know had filed for divorce after 18 months of marriage. By my calculations, they spent more time planning the wedding than being married.

Even a painful cheap shot cannot shake Jacob's resolve.

Faith, birth, vocation: our readings offer us profound, intimidating terms for thinking about what it means to be in relationship with God.

During college, I taped a religious poster on my dorm room wall. Under a photo of a white country church against a green, timbered hill were the words, "I lift up my eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help."

I liked the Bible verse, the scene was pretty, and I enjoyed the peaceful reminder of rural home places. But a friend who was knowledgeable in scripture said the poster was theologically incorrect.

In his love for the law, the psalmist is effusive and sensual; with a few word changes, verse 103 could be said to a lover.

Psalm 51 does not let any of us off the hook—not the progressives, the evangelicals, or the feel-good agnostics.

While wrestling with me and my hesitations, down along the riverbank, God whispered in my ear, “Barb: If you are going to tell a story, tell my story.” Ever since that day, honoring that stipulation has been part of the privilege and part of the burden in this vocation called ministry.

The first covenant holds forever.