(This piece originally appeared in The Presbyterian Outlook.) Icons are images that are meant to act as windows through which we look to see God. Often pictures of Jesus, they are included in the faith practices of various Christian denominations. During the Protestant Reformation, images like these were destroyed in an effort to stamp out a worship of things other than God. This action of tearing down and rejecting perceived heresy is called iconoclasm, and in an era when th

(The passage below is an excerpt from my Sex With God devotional.) The Hebrew Scriptures include an extraordinary love story between two men: David and Jonathan: When he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Saul took him that day, and wouldn’t let him go home to his father’s house any more. Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. Jonathan stripped him

I've been thinking about Jesus' final hours in the garden when he said to the apostles who were with him: can you not stay awake with me for even an hour? He was in torment from the knowledge of the darkness to come, just as he, and we, are in pain from this present darkness. He called himself and them to awaken, not to the picking up of swords, but to a girding of love. He called them to pray as he prayed, willing the required endurance, precalling requests that his crucifie

The following is an excerpt from the first Where True Love Is devotional. Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. (Romans