Grace Mills River

For two years now we’ve paid vigilant attention to our bodily hygiene. If there is a comparable kind of attention to our inner wholeness, what does it require? What purifies? Some approaches, valiant as they may be, fail. What approach holds promise?...

Following Jesus means always taking refuge in what He has said to us and done for us. But following at some point becomes a life of representing Him. We speak, pray, and act on His behalf. In this passage about representing Him we find the struggle in...

For many lists are lifesavers. They keep us on track and in turn we keep our sanity. Mark adds to his profile of Jesus as having authority over disease and death like no one around. But in turn he offers us something like a checklist for faith.

Just in the last week how many voices or sources have you given your attention to? What if any effects have you noticed in you? Perhaps never has a culture had its attention so targeted by so many competitors for it. The first parable Jesus tells is a...

The disciples expected that the kingdom of God would arrive with a flash and all at once. But with his parables Jesus flipped the script, teaching instead that the kingdom would grow slowly but surely. We’ll explore the surprising inconspicuousness...

His family thought he’d flipped. What he was saying and doing, notwithstanding his public following increasing by the day, left those who’d known him the longest bewildered–if not embarrassed for him and maybe also by him. They wanted to rein him in...

Jesus told his followers what the end of the world will entail. He’s silent on many things but he tells us exactly who we should be for the time being. The question for his followers all these centuries later is will we listen to him?

I think we all see how power, wealth, access, influence, and knowledge can change the world. But what will save it? What will rescue it from what corrupts it (including the corrupting versions of those in the preceding list)? There’s a character in an...

THEMES: On a first read you might think Jesus is a bigotted misogynist the way he at first responds to a non-Jewish woman humbly seeking his assistance. Why would he speak of her, and to her, like that? Is this the real Jesus, while the other...

Mark’s gospel travels at a fairly quick step. No episode lasts long–until we get to this famous feeding of far more than the available fare. Why does Mark take such a leisurely time telling the first of two miraculous meals? We’re meant to see...