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On Being Called Home
People away on long business trips. Lonely college students near the holidays. Military personnel deployed on combat duty. Homesick...

fathermark
2 min read


Idle Talk on a California Pier
People talk. Sometimes with a purpose, sometimes just to pass the time. Even idle conversation can lead to unintended run-ins with the...

fathermark
4 min read


Justice and the Joy of the Saints
Movies can be so unpredictable. Maybe it's better to say that my emotional response to movies is very unpredictable. Any good story has...

fathermark
3 min read


Thinking It Out: Predestined for Freedom
Predestination and the free will of mankind. Both are biblical truths, but they don't seem to fit well together. We tend to somehow...

fathermark
4 min read


Learning Contentment: lessons from imaginary fruit on an imagined planet
A wise old bishop (he really is old – in his nineties now) once described the sinful disposition of our hearts this way: “We want what we...

fathermark
3 min read


The Crazy World of News - Again
Two posts ago, I mentioned that I would be doing a three-post series on the crazy world of news media. This is the third post and really...

fathermark
3 min read


Return to the Matrix: Notable (?) News, Round 2
The Wachowski brothers are now the Wachowski sisters. I didn't see this one in the newspaper, but I did see it in a news feed that...

fathermark
3 min read


I Read It in the Paper
The news is not particularly good for you. Watch too much of it and it can mess with your head. It can mess with your heart too. ...

fathermark
3 min read


Wisdom and Folly
It must be stressed that you really can't know how to read any biblical passage well (or even rightly) without knowing its surrounding...

fathermark
3 min read


Going for Glory
I don't know what gets you choked up, but I get teary-eyed and emotional over the strangest things. I watched a few minutes of the...

fathermark
3 min read


Piling It On
When I was a kid, we played a game called “pile on.” Someone tackled somebody else and yelled “Pile on!” Everyone else then ran and...

fathermark
4 min read


Working the Soil
God was the first worker of the soil. He formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed His breath into his nostrils, and man became...

fathermark
2 min read


Men of Blood
They were undeniably men of blood. They had fought side by side. They commanded a nation. Together they were responsible for the death...

fathermark
2 min read


Building Houses
The second book of Samuel (chapter 7) has an amazing interchange between God, King David, and Nathan the prophet about building houses. ...

fathermark
3 min read


The Rock
When a friend refers to someone as a "rock,” what do you hear them saying? That that person is stable? Strong? Consistent? Maybe it...

fathermark
2 min read


Nasty Roots
They seem innocuous enough. Attractive leaves, thin tender vines with graceful tendrils. But they were growing in the wrong place -...

fathermark
3 min read


The Death of Death and the Faith of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Each year during Holy Week, we join together on Good Friday to remember Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. We often think that the term,...
Martha Vetter
4 min read


The Magdalene
She had watched him die. They had destroyed the man she loved more than life itself. After a mockery of a trial that was full of lies...

fathermark
5 min read


Flesh and bone. And all the rest.
It's that time of year when confusion often reigns. Or tendencies. Easter and Christmas get more attention than the other Christian...

fathermark
3 min read


A Strange Sucking Sound
Remember taking a bath as a child? Half the fun for me was watching the water drain out of the tub after bath time was over. My toys...

fathermark
3 min read
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