While most essays about Advent focus on anticipating the peace, love, joy, and hope that the birth of Creator’s Son inspires, I
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In many ex-colonies and countries masquerading as free, the prevailing belief is that European colonialism’s chief aim was to spread Christianity. But in some places, being Christian has been ironically recast as a betrayal of the homeland—a symbol of colonial
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While most essays about Advent focus on anticipating the peace, love, joy, and hope that the birth of Creator’s Son inspires, I would like first to consider the kind of world Jesus was born into. Let us look at the darker side of this story and then contrast it with
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There it is—the little town of Bethlehem, which has witnessed many challenges and opportunities for over 2,000 years. Yet it continues to be remembered as the town that welcomed the Lord of Light, where Christ has built His tabernacle in our midst. Two thousand years later, as we approach Christmas,
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In the scriptural passages from Psalm and Micah, we encounter the honest yearnings and hopeful desires of ancient Israel for liberation from oppression. The former takes the mode of a prayer and the latter the promise of a prophecy. In Psalm 80:1-7, the prayer beseeches God to bring salvation to
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Reflecting on the profound significance of Christ’s birth, particularly within the context of Bethlehem, invites us to contemplate not just a historical event but a divine intervention that forever changed the course of humanity. Bethlehem, a humble town, was chosen as the birthplace of the Savior, a place almost overlooked
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The people I lived among bore a startling resemblance to the tribe into which Jesus was born. The Yakama Nation is a People seeking to retain their own homelands and unique identity in the cosmos, while surrounded on all sides by empire and structural violence. The lands of the Yakama
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This is the story of two revolutions. The first one started over two thousand years ago when a tween, one who had not gone through a bar mitzvah, the coming-of-age ceremony in Jewish tradition when the person becomes responsible for their own actions. Jesus wasn’t quite an adult yet. And
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The coming of an anointed leader – a leader chosen, selected, and conferred a purpose – is a hope, an expectation, of many of us. According to our holy scriptures, this hope has been in the minds and hearts of Jews for millennia. For Christians, however, the advent of an
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What am I afraid of? What keeps me up at night or causes my body physical and emotional turmoil? Dictatorship, global warming, floods, disease, “those” Christians, our kids being harmed, lack of gun control, white supremacy culture and the list goes on. Notice that God’s judgment and wrath are not
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On the Second Sunday of Advent, you may find that—beyond the coming of the Messiah and the repentance of sins—you have forgotten some of the content of John the Baptist’s message. Some progressive, socialist, and leftist Christians may also experience difficulty establishing a practical contemporary connection between John’s emphasis on
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