Lately, I’ve been struggling with wondering if anything I do makes a difference. Then I was reminded of this piece I had drafted last July, updated this year just after Memorial Day, but then never published. I would have published it two days ago when I remembered it, but, well, I was struggling with if it mattered. Does it? Read and find out.
Here’s the thing: judgment is not about punishment. It is about justice. It is about right being done. It is about truth being revealed. God’s judgment in the Biblical texts is not primarily against those who do wrong, but more importantly, it is for those who are innocent. We should not understand God’s judgment as something different than what is described when we speak of someone having “sound judgment.” Judgment is the ability to choose between right and wrong, between good and bad, to discern between truth and lies.
What Was Lost and What We Freely Give Traditionally on Ash Wednesday, believers in many liturgical churches have ashes marked on their foreheads. Growing up in a secular household, I remember how alien this looked to me the first time I saw it. A Catholic coworker,...
Tomorrow the season of Lent begins. And I will be celebrating. I never used to celebrate Lent. I didn’t grow up in church. My mother, though a lifelong Episcopalian, was agnostic during much of my childhood, and my father considered himself an atheist — at least...
Saturday night, along with many others in my city here in Virginia, my husband and I lit candles outside our home in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. As we stood in the falling snow and frigid cold praying for the courageous people in Minnesota, I couldn’t...
Christians Praying for Democracy began two years ago in late 2023 as a small group of friends who were concerned about the erosion of democratic norms in our nation. I began the group in order to support Christian friends [1] who, like myself, were increasingly...