by Debbonnaire Kovacs The book of Ruth is such a nice little love story. Or is it? Have you ever really considered what it might have been like to be Ruth? First, she is a Moabite, presumably from a family which worships the national god of the Moabites, Chemosh, and his consort, Ashtar. As a […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs My husband, an expert gardener, used to have trouble with Jesus' statement in John 12:24 that unless a grain of wheat dies, it won't produce fruit. "That doesn't make sense!" he said. "A grain of wheat won't produce any fruit at all if it dies!" He had not grown up going to […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs Hebrews 10:19-25 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs [An apology for not posting for a few weeks] Grief, I've decided, is like a giant fun house. Not fun, at all, just full of traps. You're walking along and suddenly everything goes all stretchy and distorted, like one of those nightmares where sound becomes something from a monster movie and movement […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs The second candle in the Advent wreath is called the Bethlehem Candle and the Preparation Candle. I find that intriguing. How does Bethlehem connect with preparation? Several answers come to mind. How did Joseph and Mary prepare for the trip? It seems to me that they'd be so overwhelmed with the beauty and […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples that they need to abide in him the way branches live in a grapevine. We've been discussing and arguing and analyzing what that means ever since. We check ourselves, check each other, check our actions, and check the church manual. We make sermons and songs […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs What if I were in the upper room when the wind started? What if I weren't Peter, or James, or John, or even Matthias? What if I were some wholly unknown person–maybe one of the women? (Not Mary or Mary or the other Mary–someone no one ever heard of or ever will.) […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs This week's lectionary texts have in common the idea of God caring for us through an endless variety of troubles, from war to storm to the turmoil of being whispered against and hated. But I've been wondering for years, What does that mean, "God will take care of you"? I can tell […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs John 6:1-15 I’m running. My bag is bumping against my side and I’m getting a little out of breath, but I don’t care. I want to be in the front, where I can see. There’s a jillion people! More people than I’ve ever seen in one place before, even when Abba took […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs John 6:24-35 The next day, when the people who remained after the feeding of the five thousand saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs James 1:17-27 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become […]
by Debbonnaire Kovacs Here's something different. Different to me, anyway. I have read the Old Testament apocrypha before (and I can't figure out why we got stuck with the version of Esther that doesn't include God, instead of the lovely Greek Esther) but I don't recall this. It was one of the possibilities you could […]