RoboPreacher

Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always and not lose heart. -Luke 18:1 All too quickly another summer has past.  As September comes, we trade in the lazy summer days for the the busier cool days of the fall.  Although we do this every year, I’ve begun to wonder if there isn’t something insidious about our attitude.  Something that set Christians and the Jewish people apart from their ancient contemporaries, was their understand of time . The Romans, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, etc., they all thought of time as a never-ending cycle . Each season followed upon the next, in the same order as the year before. Each year there was the cycle of death and new births to replace the deceased. Each year the Nile flooded in the spring, the days got longer in the summer, and so on.  For the Jewish people, though, time was not a never-ending cycle. Time had a beginning ; when God made the heavens and the earth. Time also had an ending ; w...

in the veil of great surprises... Jesus told them a parable about the need to pray always and not lose heart.                                   -Luke 18:1 The Gospel for Easter is the puzzling ending of Mark’s Gospel: As they (Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome) entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:1-8, abridged) For as unsettling as this ending is to the Gospel, ...