“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted…” So begins the Preacher’s list in Ecclesiastes 3.
We might add another to the list this Advent season: a [...]
Category Archive for 'Comfort'
A number of years ago I took a course on the Hebrew prophets. When we reached the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, our professor suddenly, without warning, burst forth into Handel’s Messiah:
“Comfort ye, co – – mmm – fo – orrrt ye – – – my pe-eo-ple . . .”
The sudden shift from academic exegesis to [...]
Will I Get Better?
Posted in Comfort, Darkness, Death, Suffering on Feb 20th, 2005
Years ago, “in between church jobs”, as she puts it, Sister Elizabeth was working as a nurse in a chronic diseases hospital in Massachusetts. One of the patients she was caring for was a man who had on his back a sore that went all the way to the bone and from which he was [...]
Late the other night I was reading peacefully when I heard a tremendous clatter from the front of the house. The clatter was followed by a pitiful chittering sound. I put down my book to investigate and followed the chittering to the entranceway. There on the porch, just outside the full-length front windows, was a [...]