by Linda Post Bushkofsky— Have you ever thought about Mary as a bold woman? Our Advent memories of Mary’s song of justice have not waned so much that we can’t appreciate her boldness. During Epiphany Mary persists, caring for the infant Jesus as visitors follow the star to find the Savior. How extraordinary is Mary’s […]
By Ryan P. Cumming “I know I will never live as long or as well as I could have because I drank that water,” a resident of Flint, Michigan, told me and several of my colleagues from the ELCA churchwide organization. I sat in stunned silence and listened to this man and others speak to […]
by Tuhina Verma Rasche— I clearly remember my first encounter with Jesus. I was a college student and I was not intending to visit a church for dinner—let alone meet God in the face of everyone I encountered there. I was also not at all intending to encounter the Holy Spirit, and hear that I […]
by Sarah Carson Amanda was in a Detroit motel room when she found herself at a turning point. The man she was with had begun to beat her. “I was scared for my life, so I ran into the bathroom with my cell phone and locked the door,” she says. On the counter she found […]
by Elizabeth Hunter– “Jesus meets us in our spiritual hunger and thirst,” Bible study author Julie Kanarr says (p. 29), which perfectly sums up this issue’s theme. At the same time, Jesus invites us to ”come and see,” explains Susan K. Olson (p. 8), adding: “You’ve got to leave the place you are to see […]
–by Susan Sparks Fist fights. Pushing and shoving. Is it a political coup? A protest march? A Bette Midler concert? No. It’s Christmas shopping. One would think that after 2 million years of evolution, human beings would have transcended such nonsense. Sadly, our lengthy holiday shopping lists continue to drive our fight-or-flight genes into a […]
—by Venice R. Williams …she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn (Luke 2:7). The manger captivated me as a child. Each year I anxiously awaited the approach of the Advent season and […]
—by Karen G. Bockelman Note: In the January/February 2019 print edition of Gather, the last line of this article was mistakenly cut off. A printable PDF of this article is available for download here. Sometimes we need to turn things around. When our daughter was 3 or 4 years old, she went through a phase […]
–by Diane Norstad “Who are your ‘real’ parents?” That question was my first sense of being different in a negative way. My parents had told me about my adoption when I was little. We always thought of it as a good thing. As the Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians 4:4-6, But when the fullness […]
—by Sarah Carson I was thinking about this issue of Gather the other night when I pulled into the copy store parking lot. My to-do list was yards long, and I’d already called the store twice to beg them to help me meet my deadline. “Fear not,” I told myself, as I unbuckled my seatbelt […]