It appears to be a starless night, but that’s only because of the clouds, obscuring the light. I’m bowed before the woodstove on the round carpet that’s become my prayer rug, a place where my forehead meets the ground and the Holy Spirit falls. The air smells of wood chips and ash, and I’m praying…
Rabbis point out that creation’s seventh day had no end, no “evening and morning.” It is the context for life, the whole story to come. Key words in Biblical passages help us make connections. The parallel words and days in Genesis 1 show the construction and populating of God’s creation temple. We miss out because…
Many current controversial ethical issues lead back to Genesis. Climate change. The role of women in church and society. Treatment of Black and Indigenous peoples. Who should be allowed to get married. The problem is not the text itself. Christians so often find themselves having to apologize for harms done because of the filters used…
What does technology have to do with the opening chapters of Genesis? At first glance, the creation story seems to speak only of the natural world – skies and seas, fish and birds, stars and planets. However, the first chapters of Genesis provide a crucial frame for understanding the context for all our human cultural…
Malik Dieleman is a Toronto-based photographer and multidisciplinary artist. In this conversation we explore the process behind his fine art print series titled “Days of Creation”. In this conversation Malik explains the historical method of making cyanotype prints. He talks about how that process intersects with the Creation narrative and what it means to be…
Albert Wolters was my Greek professor, a columnist for Christian Courier, expert on the Copper Scrolls and a preacher, but he is best known internationally as the author of Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview – what philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff called “The best statement I have come across of the ‘reformational’ Christian worldview.”…
At the edge of the park, there is a line of trees with twisted branches. I remember cycling past them the first January we lived here, wondering about their strange branches. They looked sinister against a grey sky. Now we pass them every day, but they are different because we’ve seen them in springtime. Then,…
Many Christians take down their Christmas trees shortly after Christmas Eve. As their trees are awaiting pickup at the curb, others are still celebrating “Christmastide,” a season that stretches from the celebration of Jesus’s birth at Christmas on December 25th through to the celebration of Epiphany on January 6th. A celebration of God unveiled Epiphany…
In this time of COVID-19, we pray: When we aren’t sure, God,……..help us be calm;when information comes from all sides,……..correct and not, help us to discern;when fear makes it hard to breathe,and anxiety seems to be the order of the day,……..slow us down, God;help us to reach out with our hearts,……..when we can’t touch with…
I could feel my heartbeat picking up. A couple of weeks earlier my family and I had moved to London, Ontario, where I was to begin as the Christian Reformed Campus Minister at Western University and Fanshawe College. It was the summer of 1995 and most students were not yet in class. From my office…
I am giving stones for Christmas. No, not lumps of coal for the naughty, although 2020 might deserve it. I am giving geodes – plain-looking rocks on the outside, with hollow centers of beautiful crystalline structures. Geodes have been significant in my ministry. As the first pastor of Pathway Ministries in Byron Center, Michigan, I…
COVID-19 has changed our lives in ways we don’t want them changed. And it will change our Christmas celebrations in significant ways, but I’m wondering, as difficult as those changes will be, if the pandemic might have a positive impact on our celebrations. Could COVID-19 deepen our experience of Grace from Advent to Easter and…
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