By Barry Howard It’s dark outside, and today seems even darker than usual. And it should. Today is the darkest day of the year. For those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, the shortest day of the year,…
Holiday Interrupted
I’ve been busy with the holidays since last week. When the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson was announced, I was picking up extended family from the airport. When a local action took place in my city the next day, I…
Advent: A Time to Slow Down and Listen Up
The long lines of Black Friday have finally gone down but the blitz of the hyper-commercialized holiday season is just revving up. This period of time from Thanksgiving to Christmas has become the “busy” season. There are trees to decorate,…
What makes a Christmas card a Christmas card?
Since about 10 days before Thanksgiving, our festive household has received a regular collection of colorful greeting cards appropriate for the various holidays that occur during the last six weeks of the year. The first to come were the greetings…
Advent as parenthesis
A parenthesis is a break in the flow of a thought, an interval, or a time between two events. We experience many events in life that embody this idea of waiting either in anticipation or in dread. Life transitions are…
Blue Christmas
Last year about this time I was preaching for the Blue Christmas service held at a church in a another city. It’s one of those services where the church gives a nod to the fact that not all people are…