According to Isaiah, a fast honoring God’s will is one that seeks to end oppression, one in which we are attentive to what we have and how we share it.

Going grocery shopping when I was a child, my parents avoided checkout-line conflict by allowing me to choose one candy bar as a treat. I’ve continued the tradition as an adult, permitting myself one special item in addition to our household list. It may have been the time I chose carrot-kale-spinach juice as my treat, or maybe it was when I picked probiotic tea with nutrient-packed chia seeds, that I realized I’ve become a bit of a health nut. Yet it is possible to care for our health without going overboard. We can stay away from fad diets and try […]

“This violence needs to stop,” she said. “I don’t even know what to say. This is sad.”

Waiting for the results of the HIV test offered by a local nonprofit, I prayed for those who have the virus. I imagined how I might feel if I were among them.

Cultivating a sense of enough may help us to see life as an interconnected whole rather than a hodgepodge of bits and pieces to swap in or out if given the chance.

Advent is a gift. It allows us to see the world as it is and glimpse what God wants it to be.

The uneasy part is when the question pops up, as it often does, of whether I am thinking of having children.

How can we use digital technology without it becoming an obstacle in our relationships with God and with each other?

When a loved one dies, we feel the loss both in the shock after we hear the news and in the months and years as the absence continues. In Chicago, more than 300 families this year have borne the pain of having someone taken away from them by homicide. Leaders debate the cause of the high number of murders. Local and national news articles compare our city’s homicide rate to that of New York or Los Angeles, or the total deaths since 2001 to the number of U.S. troops killed in Afghan­istan. Chicago’s figures are worse in all three cases. […]

Walmart marks the 50th anniversary of its first store opening in Arkansas this month. In the midst of its celebrations, advocates for the retail giant’s employees are calling for a Jubilee. In the world of ancient Israel, five-decade cycles of Sabbaths culminated with the Jubilee year. Just as the seventh day was Sabbath, in the seventh year people rested from cultivating crops, granted remission of debts and set slaves free, as detailed in Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15. After seven Sabbath years, horns accompanied proclamations of a time of restoring right relationships and recognizing God as the source of all […]