Month: April 2022

Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” [Acts 9:3-6]. Just outside Bab Kisan (i.e., “Kisan Gate”), one of the seven ancient city-gates of Damascus, Syria, there is a statue of the apostle Paul being thrown from his horse as he approaches the city on the fateful day of…

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe” [John 20:24-25]. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Jane and I spent almost two weeks in March lounging and talking with a small group of college friends at two separate idyllic spots on the South Carolina coast. Virtually all of us are the same…

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight [Isaiah 65:17-18]. Sorry to start my Holy Week meditation on a downer, but as I began to write this week’s piece on Tuesday evening, I heard—through the magic of my Phonak hearing aids—snippets of an evening news story regarding the Brooklyn subway incident, in which 10 or more people were shot by an assailant, posing as a workman. During Palm…

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side [Luke 19:41-43]. Today, for the first time in the more than two years that I’ve been writing these Wednesday meditations, the Lectionary text that I’ve chosen as the basis for this piece [Luke 19:28-40 Passion/Palm Sunday, RCL, Year C] serves as an overlay for the text we discussed this…