Brief theological considerations This article was originally written and published in German as “Christ und Wirtschaft,” Der Mennonit. Internationales mennonitisches Gemeindeblatt 26/11 (November 1973): 161-162.

Consider how business theory applies to the church. Some believe it is the definitive model of how to do church. Others are more skeptical. The church is in the world and submits (hopefully with eyes wide open) to some of the basic laws of earthly economics, but it is not of the world …

In order to address “the afterlife,” one must first speak of the meaning of life in the present. The afterlife does not stand alone as if disconnected from prior earthly life. The after is connected to the before, to the everyday life of the Christian in the present. The attitude toward death in our society is relevant as well …

Poem You must turn away from the speech center until the desire for language slips beyond the weary orbits of vocabulary and definition into that

Living in the present is at once the easiest and the hardest thing you’ll do. And the key is found in those two short words (six letters) “at once” …

The story of Jacob wrestling at Peniel has always puzzled me. In my first Bible, the New International Version I read as a third-grader, the subject heading was “Jacob Wrestles with an Angel.” If this stranger is indeed an angel of the Lord, it is not one of the sort pictured on greeting cards or spoken of in sentimental tales of angels in disguise helping people unaware …

Three stories of how prayer changed things in an unexpected way, leading to God moments. As I entered the hospital room and introduced myself, I

Pastor shares way of peace with young couple A stranger hugged me the other day in front of my house. This wasn't the kind of

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 …