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The tree branches are bare, and the flowers in the garden are gone. But did you know that many plants need this time of cold winter weather to grow and bloom?

It was the custom in the Gereformeerde churches that six weeks before Good Friday, ministers would preach about the passages dealing with Jesus’ suffering.

I think sometimes we are so afraid of being defined by our grief or by our suffering that we try to avoid its presence in our lives.

None of us pictured graduating in a pandemic, trying to navigate through an online world, or starting a career from home.

What would this have meant to the people who first heard or read it?

I have thousands of photos in the cloud. I know they are not really in a cloud in the sky, but where are they?

Over dinner she said, “Neither of us is Christian, but we wondered if you could do our wedding anyway and take out all the religious stuff?”

You’ll see that there have been many groups of people who feel this way. It’s just like when I was moved around a lot and then finally grew up in an adopted family.

I look back with amazement at these four decades and find that I am still traveling, living often as a foreigner and stranger.

What happens to all the animals in winter?

Our council sometimes meets all together and sometimes separately with only elders or deacons. How do we know what each group can decide?

How do we know if we have domesticated Scripture to feed our spiritual pride? There are at least three major signs.

I can’t change the fact that at a very young age I learned this behavior of ignoring older women, but I am responsible for how I behave today.

In my work facilitating support groups and assisting in workshops, I have seen the difficulties of caring for a person living with dementia.

These facts are only a few in a long list of social ills, conflicts, and challenges God’s people have faced these past few years.

It can be hard not to know what one ought to do. It feels as if it would be easier if God let us know directly what we ought to do next! But that is not how God usually works.

For many of my Christian friends, peers, and colleagues, “vocation” and “calling” have become hollow words, a varnish smeared over mundane jobs.

See how readers responded to recent Banner issues, articles, and columns.

The electricity has to come from somewhere, and power plants emit carbon. Am I really being a better steward buying an electric vehicle than an efficient gas-powered vehicle?

There is something about our nature that hinders us from understanding.

We have a way of convincing ourselves that we deserve power, blessing, and a privileged identity because of our relationship with God.

“a prism of leaves drift in cool air / whirling dervishes on their way down”