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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
