Yom Kippur is coming. After forty days of special prayers and reflection, we enter into a day of repentance, resolve, supplication, and forgiveness. The center of Yom Kippur is atonement between us and God and reconciliation with our neighbors. As year follows year, there’s always the danger of . . . . Continue Reading »
On the evening of June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, twenty-one at the time, casually joined a group of African Americans gathered peacefully at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, for a Bible study. For over an hour, he participated in the discussion, and . . . . Continue Reading »
Few New Yorkers ever have been so admired as police officer Steven McDonald—and not only because he placed himself in the line of fire. McDonald’s recent death from respiratory failure at the age of 59 brought back memories of the painful day that changed his life forever—plunging him into an . . . . Continue Reading »
The most screenshotted sequence in Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade is “Hold Up.” After discovering her husband’s infidelity, she walks down the street smashing storefronts with a baseball bat, finally crushing a row of cars in a monster truck. Viewed alone, the song seems like a simple . . . . Continue Reading »
Already a victim of someone else’s hate, forgiveness frees you from being a victim of your own hate. This allows the victims to pursue justice with a clear conscience.
It’s funny because Linus makes the grave reading of Luke 2 for Charlie Brown and says, “That’s what it’s all about, Charlie Brown,” and we feel like something really important® has been said by Dollie Madison cakes and Coca-Cola. But Luke 2 isn’t in a vacuum. The matter of what happened on the night in question in the city of David when there was no room in the inn is not really about anything unless there is something more to this child than a birth in poverty into an indifferent world. Continue Reading »
My point, so far, is that God’s wrath is coming, and Jesus — whose birth we celebrate at Christmas — is the savior from that wrath. It’s a point a lot of people got because that’s what a savior is — and it’s a point I have made here before, so you were . . . . Continue Reading »
As I’m writing this fourth part, I’m betting that you’re worn out already — “OK, Frank: wrath of God. I got it. Christ was born to satisfy the wrath of God, and that’s good, and that’s a really sound reason to have joy at Christmas. Amen — I’m . . . . Continue Reading »