Grace Mills River

The story of the events leading to Jesus’s execution are familiar to us. Perhaps too familiar. We will hear a true story in a very different setting, but which helps us not just understand, but feel what is at work and at stake in the trial of Jesus.

Whatever our personal beliefs or convictions, we find ourselves less inclined to publicly identify with them–so the analyses trickle in. We’ve seen what befalls someone who aligns themselves openly, and so we opt-out. The apprehension may have...

It’s debatable whether the consequences of the last two years have more to do with what they’ve produced in us, or what they’ve revealed in us. What is certain is how both now and always we find what is truest in us through an experience of pressure...

Anthony Bourdain was more than a chef, more than a foodie. He sought to impress upon us how food was more than eating. There was a sense in which one had to eat and drink worthily of what had been prepared for them. Truer words have not been spoken...

In another episode where Jesus faces opposition from the sanhedrin, Jesus’ authority is put on full display. They lay a trap with a trick question about taxes, but Jesus refuses to be finagled. Instead, his brilliant answer leaves them marveling. What...

It is his fiercest, most demonstrative act. He has displayed exasperation before, but not like this. Not to this degree. It will disturb everyone who saw it happen. It will inflame those who will in turn conspire to have him killed. To condemn is in...

No understanding of what it means to follow Jesus would be complete without knowing how to think of what most competes for our attention–namely, our things. Things without a theology become an intoxicant. We exist in a culture where acquiring is both...

Everyone in every time in most every place wants to matter. Success, happiness, greatness: these words all constellate around the abiding desire to know our lives are not a “tale told by an idiot..full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In...

To this point in Mark’s account, we’ve both heard and seen plenty of astonishing things from Jesus. Not like what we’re about to see, though.​​ The otherworldliness of Jesus is on display if only for a moment. Why bother? Why make a momentary...

A man is healed of blindness in a way unlike any other of Jesus’s healings. It turns out to be a metaphor for the spiritual sight of us all. What must we see to follow? What must we be healed by Him to see?