Poem (after “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon) Let the owl be satisfied at last and return to his snowy bower. Let the orange rim

The biblical terms for sacrificial atonement, in both Hebrew and Greek, are understood better as cleansing of sin than payment to God. That sentence is sure to elicit responses—positive and negative—because it bears upon a major controversy among scholars and layfolk alike …

I was in Baghdad during Holy Week of 2004, the week the stupidity of the Iraq war became unavoidably obvious. On Palm Sunday, the day the people of Jerusalem took to the streets to welcome a messiah they did not comprehend any more than we do, thousands of Moqtada al-Sadr’s followers shut down central Baghdad’s streets, protesting the arrest of a top aide and the closing of al-Sadr’s newspaper …

My neighbor is a master gardener and demonstrates her growing skill with more elaborate, more beautiful gardens every year. Before she studied gardening, her backyard was an overgrown, poison ivy-infested hillside sloping down toward the St. Joseph River …

Ask Gundolf Niebuhr when you visit the Jacob Unger Museum in Filadelfia, Paraguay. Want to see specimens of 210 species of mammals in the Chaco?

If you are looking for Ernesto Unruh, you just may find him on his hands and knees with other members of the congregation, painting the floor of the church in Yalve Sanga, the Chaco, Paraguay. If you have the honor of speaking with him, which you can do at Mennonite World Conference 2009, you will find he will humbly speak of working together with others, of cooperation and harmony …

Helga Dueck and the School for the Deaf in Filadelfia, Paraguay Helga Dueck had no idea, when she started out for the Mennonite World Conference

Since the first exploration in 1921, Paraguay has become a kind of city of refuge for Mennonites. In 2008, the entire multiethnic Mennonite population, including the indigenous and Paraguayan Latinos, was around 60,000 …

I’d gladly go to the desert for 40 days. Spare beauty there in a season of not yet— Snow peels itself back from peaks, and

Pastor J.P. Masih’s has come to the Asian Mennonite Community Church in Aurora, Ill. “Our congregation is very small,” J.P. says—so small they can’t afford to pay for pastoral health insurance …

Scattered throughout the letters of Paul are references to a collection he initiated for distressed believers in Jerusalem. In 2 Corinthians 8–9 Paul appeals to the Corinthians and other Gentile churches to respond to the material needs of their fellow believers in Jerusalem …

Communion and mission can go together. Early Christian tradition, not New Testament teaching, tied baptism and Communion together. In the first few centuries after the