Aimee Smucker noticed the little dog as she left a Sarasota, Fla., drugstore. The animal lover couldn’t just walk by, so she reached down to pet the Yorkie attached to a leash held by an older man. She...
[read more]
Palestinian weddings can last for a week, as family and friends revel through rounds of anticipatory parties. When it’s finally time for vows, men convene at the groom’s home for one last celebration...
[read more]
Forty years ago, Merle and Phyllis Pellman Good already were among the highest-profile entrepreneurs in the Mennonite church. Their Good Enterprises, based in Intercourse, Pa., included book publishing,...
[read more]
From his vantage point at the dawn of the second century, the author of James casts an eye across the churchscape of his time, taking its measure. He is unsettled. And with good reason. He sees the exiled,...
[read more]
This is the great seriousness of the Advent message and its great blessing. Christ stands at the door. He lives in the form of people around us. Will you therefore leave the door locked for your protection, or...
[read more]
Crack the first windows of your family Advent calendar and you will soon enough hear Mary and Zachariah and the angels in lyric worship and praise. The hour of promise come ’round could only ever begin that...
[read more]
Captivating might not be the first word to come to mind regarding a documentary about Fred Rogers — creator and host of the long-running children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood — but Won’t You Be...
[read more]
During his opening address at the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoanga implored U.N. member states to hold each other accountable for...
[read more]
When I applied for the pastoral position at my current congregation, during one interview, I asked the search committee when they’d last celebrated a baptism. They thought for a moment. “Years,” they...
[read more]
In 1743, 275 years ago, the Swiss city of Bern dissolved its Commission for Anabaptist Affairs, or Tauferkammer. It had been established in 1659 to oversee the elimination of the local Anabaptist population....
[read more]
In October, the longtime evangelical leader Pat Robertson weighed in on the murder of journalist Jamal Kashoggi in a Saudi consulate. According to Robertson, the United States needed to tread lightly with...
[read more]
Jewel and I celebrated our golden anniversary with a two-month visit to 25 national parks and as many friends west of the Mississippi. We “camped” inside our Odyssey van, cooked our food on an old Coleman...
[read more]
Immigration has shaped nearly every epoch of U.S. history. Americans are a nation of people who have left one place in order to arrive in a new world. With the rise of the Trump administration, however, the...
[read more]
Hear the opening lines of Deuteronomy 6 and you cannot escape a feeling that you have stumbled on some center pole of sacred story, a great stake having been driven to the core. It’s as though you find...
[read more]
This fall, I moved from Rusk County, Wis., to Boston to attend college. Not one of Boston’s big-name institutions like Harvard or MIT, but Sattler, a college of a different stripe. Named for a 16th-century...
[read more]
In a few days we’ll observe Thanksgiving. We will pause to thank our Creator for the blessings we have received. But some of us may ask: How can we give thanks in the midst of animosity? In the United...
[read more]
“Woman’s Protest Exposes Cruel Political Ploy.” This could be a headline for the present day or for the story of Rizpah. We don’t hear much about Rizpah. Her perplexing narrative is found in 2 Sam....
[read more]
Credentialed Mennonite ministers are a unique lot, yet our experiences are diverse. In some congregations, a theological understanding of the priesthood of all believers diminishes the significance of pastors....
[read more]
Contemporary memoir, unlike autobiography, is selective in its sharing of life experiences for a defined purpose: to represent a voice, often that of a woman, not heard before — from Maya Angelou’s...
[read more]
Confession: I am not always the world’s most observant person. Friends once rearranged half the items in my office as a joke and were quite disappointed that I never knew the difference. Still, I’m fairly...
[read more]
For six days a week, we labor to make the world as it should be. On one day, we accept the world as it is. A friend and ministry colleague repeated this comment from one of his students about what it means to...
[read more]
An American friend asked me if Canadians were watching the Supreme Court nomination process Brett M. Kavanaugh in September. The answer was yes, I said. Partly because, living so close to the U.S., news about...
[read more]
This November, four states will vote on legalizing marijuana: Utah and Missouri for medical use and North Dakota and Michigan for adult recreational use. If all four proposals pass, the national total would...
[read more]
Many Christians I know cannot stand Jacob. In technical terms, he’s what’s known as a “grade-A slime ball.” He steals from his brother, lies to his father, tricks his uncle and sleeps with his true...
[read more]
One hundred years ago next month, on Nov. 11, 1918, an armistice brought World War I to an end, ceasing the four-year-old conflagration that resulted in 40 million casualties, unprecedented destruction and...
[read more]
