Pitch Dark
Advent has always been my favorite holiday season, and when I think of it, two memories float to the surface. One is dark and cold and the other warm and light. Because Advent is nothing if not dialectical…
Read MoreFleming Rutledge
Falling Into Our Own Pit
He plotted. Legislation offered. Legislation signed. Check. Gallows built. Check. Expecting to be celebrated, Haman illustrated the wisdom of the Proverbs, “Dig a pit and you’ll fall in it.” Haman’s fall was not broken by the bottom of a pit. They hanged Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. Esther is not about…
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Like A Whore In Church
Like A Whore In Church Isaiah 1.21-31 “How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her – but now murderers!” There’s a reason that Isaiah 1.21-31 doesn’t appear in the Lectionary. When we think of Advent we conjure up in our minds the Chrismon…
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Apocalypse Chow
I recently saw Jim Bakker (yes, that Jim Bakker) on TV hawking flood buckets filled with freeze-dried food so that lucky purchases could be prepped for the great and terrible tribulations that will ocassion the End Times. Perhaps when we celebrate this season of the second coming with a theme like Advent Begins in the…
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Welcome to Advent in the Dark
It took less than an hour for an Iowa jury to find a 28-year-old Iowa father guilty of murder after his 4-month-old son was found dead in a motorized swing last year. Zachary Koehn was convicted of first-degree murder and child endangerment causing death. On Aug. 30, 2017, authorities arrived at the home of Koehn…
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