Bible study
Delight and the Song of Songs
To celebrate Easter, we’ve been looking at the Song of Songs in our studies on Monday evenings. It’s a book that celebrates delight and human bodies, which is especially helpful in this time of a pandemic when life feels a little less delightful and moving our lives on to zoom has made us feel a…
Read MoreHope this Easter
It has felt odd celebrating Easter this year, as it’s hard to celebrate when we do not get to be physically with many of those we care about. Besides the challenges of social distancing, more and more of us here in the United States are experiencing COVID-19 close up, either knowing someone who has become…
Read MoreHow lonely is the city
“How lonely is the city that once was full of people!” is how the Old Testament book of Lamentations begins. These words suggest that the life of the city is dependent on people and the relationships between people. When these are absent the city itself feels lonely and “the roads to Zion mourn” (Lam 1:4). The…
Read MoreEpiphany – Seeing anew
Epiphany stands for ‘manifestation’ or ‘appearance’ and is celebrated on January 6. As Campus Edge’s Monday night study fell on Epiphany this year, we celebrated it together. This included blessing the house together, which was a liturgical experience few of us had experienced (as it’s outside of our church traditions). We also spent some time…
Read MoreGod of tomorrow, some day, and forever
In the season of Advent, a lot of people look to the book of Isaiah and find hope in how the texts point to the coming of Christ (especially Isaiah 7:14; 9:6-7; 11:1-9). Ironically, though, I find the texts less hopeful when the focus is primarily on how they’ve been fulfilled by Jesus’ birth. I…
Read MoreIsaiah and the Prophetic Call to a Just Society
At the beginning of his book, the prophet Isaiah convicts a “sinful nation, people laden with iniquity” (1:4). The society he describes is full of bribes (1:23), fixes itself on material wealth (2:7) and denies justice to orphans and widows (1:23). Even the worship of the people is meaningless without justice: “bringing offerings is futile;…
Read MoreActs and the Gospel of Hope
In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28) The Book of Acts records the earliest proclamations of the gospel after the time of Jesus. Peter, Paul and others preach to Jews, Greeks, philosophers, politicians, kings and foreigners all around the Middle East. Extraordinarily, Peter and John were “ordinary, uneducated men” (4:13),…
Read MoreHope for all Creation: Ezekiel 47
As part of our chapel series on Hope for all creation, I gave the following short reflection on Ezekiel 47:1-12. While I have grown to love the book of Ezekiel, I often find it strange. And this passage, despite the beautiful image of life-giving water that it presents, is no exception. It is filled with…
Read MoreReading the book of Daniel
I have to admit to being a bit surprised by how much I’ve appreciated looking at the first part of the book of Daniel. As much as I love the Bible, I associate the stories of Daniel with Sunday school stories that tended towards primarily encouraging us to be good moral people. Such a simplistic…
Read MoreJudges: God uses the weak and unexpected
We’ve been looking at the book of Judges in our studies at Campus Edge. The book of Judges is strange and violent, and it’s not always clear how these ancient stories apply to our lives today. Yet, the book of Judges is clear in telling us that God raises up judges from the weak and…
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