This spring I’ve rejoined the Heidleberg College Community Choir. There’s a different director this term, and the music is interesting and challenging. But what has been the most challenging has been the warm up exercises we do. The director is really old-school. Actually, the college’s whole conservatory must be pretty old-school. My evidence? They know …
Monthly Archives: March 2008
Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent: 2008
Psalm 85:1-7; Ezekiel 37:21-28; John 11:45-53 As Lent blends into Easter, we see clearly the purpose for our time of fasting and self-examination. Through Lent we prepare for Holy Week and Easter. Certainly part of that preparation is to purify ourselves, to confess our shortcomings. However, we do not confess to an unmerciful Lord bent …
Friday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008
Psalm 18:1-7, Jeremiah 20:7-13 My wife and I once took teaching jobs that we were convinced God meant for us to have. We left the urban North for the rural South to do what we believed God called us to do. Yet others—Christians—made doing that work impossible to the point of affecting our spiritual and …
Thursday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008
Genesis 17:1-8, Psalm 105:4-11, John 8:51-59 My parents once made a chart with days and chores on it. Each day I did my chores, I earned a star on the board. At the end of the month, if I earned enough stars, they promised to buy me a skateboard. It was our covenant. What made …
Wednesday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008
John 8:31-42 “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31). These words are among the most famous declarations Christ made. As hopeful and inspiring as these words can be, they were not so to Christ’s original audience. These believers immediately grasped the implication that to be made free means …
Tuesday in the 5th Week of Lent: 2008
Numbers 24:4-9, Psalm 102:15-22, John 8:21-30 Forty days of Lent can sometimes feel like forty years in the desert. We leave the heady celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany to enter stark cold, short days, blustery wind, and gray skies. Remembering the festivities, we long for the liveliness of spring. Along the way, we grumble and …
Monday in the 5th Week of Lent
John 8:1-20, the book of Susanna What does it mean to have the “light of life” (John 8:12)? Today’s lessons feature stories of men accusing women of sin. In one story the woman is innocent of the charge; in the other, the woman appears to have committed the sin. In both cases, the woman is …
