I never thought I’d be the one in the family begging to turn on the all-Christmas-all-the-time radio station—in our case, Wish 99.7, Pittsburgh’s official Christmas station—especially not the day before Advent. But this year I was the first to tune in. How else to get Adele turned off? The several previous days of Thanksgiving food…
Category: Theological Reflection
God Isn’t Fixing This
Three years ago on a Saturday afternoon in Advent I was frantically rewriting the beginning of my sermon for the next morning. The day before a gunman had entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and killed 20 children and six adults. This Advent pastors are drafting sermons after another massacre. And many will try to address…
Starbucks, Red Cups, and the Grace of Being Offended
While the Christian right and the left are hashing it out over Twitter, arguing about the merits and demerits of Starbucks’s new inclusive red cups, I want to press pause to ask the question: Is there anything this episode can teach us about the Christian spiritual life? The answer, I believe, is yes. We can…