John the Baptist and Jesus both proclaimed, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” So, where is it? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. As Jesus went about His ministry healing the sick, forgiving sin, touching the outcasts, eating with sinners, washing feet, and finally going to the cross, he was showing us what the Kingdom of God looks like. We usually think of a Kingdom as a region where a powerful figure rules and everyone is subject to that person. That is not the kingdom that Jesus brought. He...

We, humans, tend to be selective in whom we love. We have experienced opening our hearts to someone and been hurt, sometimes deeply, in the process. Loving someone makes us vulnerable.             So we are careful about whom we love. We categorize people into various levels of love. And we also categorize people into levels of those we dislike. We clearly remember those who have hurt us. Often, then, we dislike all those who are like the persons who hurt us even without knowing them....

As we look around us at all of the hatred, violence, and self-centeredness in the world, a common question is: “Where is God in all of this?” Has God abandoned us? Has God given up on this world?             Over the centuries there have been many ways of addressing these questions. In ancient times there were philosophies, often attributed to the Greeks, that the physical world is evil and the spiritual world is good. Even though this ideas was rejected by the church, aspects of it affected...