Easter Sunday, Year C “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” Twelve years ago we joined my parents for […]
Death
63 posts
“In the face of death, I realized that it was not love that kept me clinging to life but unresolved anger. Love, real love flowing from me or toward me, sets me free to die. Death would not undo that love. To the contrary, death would deepen it and strengthen […]
Tying your dress shoes in a double knot,Like an eight-year-old. Running off the bus and flopping on the couch after school, Like an eight year old. Putting together your LEGO early in the morning (and late at night),Like an eight-year-old. Sledding down the hill at the back of your friend’s house,Like […]
This is an entry in the “Acrostic Contemplations.” See “Nunc Dimittis” “…He will swallow up death forever.” Isa. 25:8a We do not like to talk about death. Never have. Any of us. Which is not to say we don’t talk about death, we can’t avoid it. And there are some, […]
Fowl Language is a panel comic by Brian Gordon that usually focuses upon the challenges of parenthood…through ducks. It seems that, in the world of the comic, if not Gordon’s own life, grief has arrived as the father’s mother is nearing her end. His last two comics are wonderful and […]
Today in the Church Calendar we remember the slaughter of the Innocents by Herod (Matt. 2:13-18). There can never be justification or explanation sufficient for the death of the innocent, wherever and whenever, and I will make no efforts to do so. But the prayer that we offer in the […]
Those of us who grieve loved ones who are no longer with us view All Saints’ Eve and All Saints’ Day in a different way. We remember those who have gone before us, often too soon, and we try and do so in hope. The resurrection is that hope, “the […]
The following is an excerpt from Beautiful and Terrible Things, chapter 8, “Raised Imperishable.” A recent comic by my friend Michael Jantze made me think again about how we refer to death. I may be pushing my exegesis of 1 Cor. 15:20, but I think there is significance in Paul’s […]
The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, Beautiful and Terrible Things: A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope. My father died on Maundy Thursday 2019. As my mother and I sat by my father’s bed in the ICU, we began to talk about plans for his funeral—not […]
Beautiful and Terrible Things: A Christian Struggle with Suffering, Grief, and Hope is out and available from the publisher and all the usual places where you buy words on pages (and words in pixels and spoken, the Kindle and audio versions are available too!). The description from the publisher: Bible […]