As we celebrate our nation’s Independence, some then-and-now is in order. On July 4, 1793, Rev. Enos Hitchcock offered an oration at the Baptist Meeting House in Providence, Rhode Island. The speech was colored by personal experience. Hitchcock served as chaplain during the war, first at Crown Point and Ticonderoga and then later at Valley Forge and West Point, seeing the high cost of liberty and ministering to countless men who paid it in full. As townsfolk gathered to celebrate... Read more
It’s appropriate to contemplate angels rejoicing at our homecoming. After all, if we are the heirs of salvation, and angels are ministers to the heirs of salvation as Paul says in Hebrews, then our final success is their success too. My mind turns to this subject after hearing about the passing of the beloved Fr. Peter Gillquist. Upon the passing of Acholius the bishop of Thessalonica, Ambrose of Milan said something that applies here too. He expressed regret that this... Read more
Why does the Lord’s Prayer matter? Let the context answer the question. In Luke’s account, Jesus’ disciples approach. They point to John the Baptist’s practice of teaching his disciples to pray and ask for similar treatment. “Teach us to pray,” they implore. This is a reasonable request. What is a person, a fallen human, supposed to say to an almighty, all-holy God? God tells us that his ways are not ours. We cannot identify with him. And if prayer is... Read more
In the endless debates about Christianity it is common to subject the church to a cost-benefit analysis. On one side of the ledger we tally up the positive impacts the faith has had: hospitals, orphanages, universities, etc. On the other side we tote up the wars, the witch-hunts, and other unhappy what-have-yous. From this analysis we expect to decide if Christianity is worth believing. If it tilts positive, then yes. If negative, then no. Since the relative value of the... Read more
We live in a day of extremes, and sometimes it seems our culture’s highest virtue is going overboard. Everything is super-sized, quad-shot, high-energy, maximum-strength, full-throttle. I wonder and worry about how much of that infects our faith. If being radical for Jesus means being totally committed to the kingdom, that’s great. But if we’re obsessing on doing something big for Jesus, as if that’s the only thing that counts, then we’re missing something. The truth is that holiness and kingdom... Read more
E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey sold over 10 million copies in its first six weeks here in the U.S., according to the publisher. If you’re close to the publishing business, you know that number is high enough to induce acute tachycardia. Precious few books ever sell such quantities. But this book and its companion volumes are hardly precious, and there are some serious reasons to be concerned about the phenomenon. I’ve now read several exchanges among Christians in the... Read more
What if instead of judging others, we saw their failings as our own? Some years back I read Duke Ellington’s autobiography, Music is My Mistress. A statement he made about withholding judgement of others really stuck with me. “We should recognize that everybody is capable of making a mistake,” he said, “and we should not raise any more hell about somebody else’s mistakes than we expect to be raised when we make one. Who does not make mistakes? Who is... Read more
Jesus tells us not to pray in public. But he doesn’t teach us to pray by ourselves. The Lord addresses this in the Sermon on the Mount. Right after saying that we shouldn’t call attention to our charity, but rather do it in secret, Jesus tells his disciples to pray the same way. “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites,” he says; “for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street... Read more
It’s easy to delay prayer as we brace for the daily grind, and easier still to forget about it as we wade through the tumult of the day. But what if we thought of prayer as our first and most important job? In his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent, John Climacus refers to prayer as the work of angels. Christians are invited to join in this labor as part of our walk with Christ. I think there’s merit to... Read more
It’s a sobering thought to realize that we will all someday face a final judgment. In the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie, The Departed, Jack Nicholson’s character, mob boss Frank Costello, walks past an associate in a bar and asks how his mother is doing. The man replies, ruefully, “She’s on her way out.” “We all are,” says Costello without a trace of sympathy, “act accordingly.” It’s a telling insight into the character. The murderous Costello is not a man who... Read more
Joel J. Miller
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