What do you think about when you hear the word Lent? The world bombards us with questions: “What are you doing for Lent?” “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” “How long do you think you can go without Starbucks [or fast food, or sugar, or whatever they think might be a typical…

I find the season of Lent a tremendous relief. We enter into this season together, acknowledging openly and honestly that we don’t measure up. We all fall short of what God has called us to be. We live in a world that is simultaneously beautiful and disastrous, a world filled with great injustices, horrors, and…

Have you ever been sailing? Do you know that feeling when you are making your way out of the channel into a harbor, uncertain of how to reach your destination? As someone who has spent some time on a sailboat, I know that in order to get to the harbor, you have to see where…

In the Gospel according to Matthew, Jesus calls a child, puts him among the disciples, and says to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3 NRSV). A scant few centuries later, a twelve-year-old girl, Agnes, lived in the Roman Empire…