MBS Newsletter
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: 2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9
Love’s hungriest impulse is the want to know, about the object of one’s affection, all that can be possibly known.
This is no less true of a Christian’s love for the Savior. We devour what little there is available of his biography, absorbing the birth, reveling in the three years between his baptism and death, the time which encompassed his ministry.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-14; Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27; Mark 1:40-45
Much of Christian belief centers on the idea that God so fiercely, and specifically, loved us that Jesus, God incarnate, suffered death on a cross for our sakes.
That’s a grandiose and humbling thought. To be Christian means to enter into a special relationship with God, one based on mutual love. It means to stand, accepting grace, before the creator of the universe.
Posted by Michelle Schingler
Readings: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39
I do not always come to the prophet Isaiah willingly.
His words have been bent and misused, often to questionable ends; the darker moments of his prophecies have been perverted by some to become a gleeful anticipation of the end of days.
Posted by: Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28
In the course of my religious education, I have gradually learned to sin against orthodoxy.
Of course, I say this now without any sense that such things actually constitute “sin.” I have not lost faith in the face of my academic concessions. My conviction was not shaken, for example, by my decision to stop referring to God as a “he,” nor by the introduction of the idea that we can know so little about God that assigning gender is silly.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20
At times, I’ve felt I want to leave the Church.
Not because my convictions regarding Jesus have ever altered—I love the spirit of religion, the undiluted emphasis upon living in a godly manner which is at Christianity’s core. But at times, the establishment doesn’t fit me entirely well—its emphases and parameters come to feel uncomfortable, particularly when old theologies which I’d consider negative are emphasized.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: 1 Samuel 3:1-10, (11-20); Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18; 1 Corinthians 6:12-20; John 1:43-51
Our readings for the week all have to do with wonderment. Wonderment at stumbling across God unexpectedly; wonderment at discovering that God has staked some hope in us individually; wonderment that we, who can feel so small and insignificant, are not only known to God, but are seen in heaven in all of our intricate particularity.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12
We are told that three came from the East inquiring after him.
What we know of them from the gospel is little. They are called “wise”, and emanate from some enigmatic place previously beyond monotheism’s reach. They come searching, having heard that a great ruler has been born, having learned this, apparently, from a study of the stars.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: Ecclesiastes 3:1-13; Psalm 8; Revelation 21:1-6a; Matthew 25:31-46
Posted by: Michelle Anne Schingler
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined” (Isaiah 9:2).
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By the third ostentatious sign of evangelism, I realized two things: the first, I’d been driving too long, and I was weary; the second, that I was unquestionably back in the South.
Posted by Michelle Anne Schingler
Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Luke 1:46b-55; Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38
Each year around this time, I encounter someone among my acquaintances who’s eager to pass along a familiar, and always freshly perplexing, warning: THEY are out to destroy Christmas.
