Friday, March 12Exodus 33-34I have a couple of friends who I have known for years, but don’t see all that often anymore. We live in different cities and juggle busy lives, so we don’t talk as often as we once did. When we do reconnect, though, we get deep in a hurry. We talk for hours and cover every topic under the sun.I bring this up, because this is how Moses and God’s conversation in these two...  Read More

Thursday, March 11Exodus 32For Christmas, my 4 year old son got a pair of Mario and Luigi remote control cars. He. Loves. Them. Whenever they come out of storage, there is low-level chaos in the house. The small cars are ramming into doors and baseboards. He lines them up so they can ramp off steps to a thundering crash. Of course eventually the cars run out of battery life and need to be recharge...  Read More

Wednesday, March 10Exodus 30-31Have you ever attempted to read the Bible cover-to-cover? If you have, you know that starting with Genesis is easy and entertaining -- it covers the Creation story, the fall of Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, and Joseph, whose saga and elaborate cloak inspired Broadway. Then, the epic saga continues in Exodus where you meet Pharaoh, Moses, and the Israselites, and God send...  Read More

Tuesday, March 9Exodus 28-29These two chapters discuss priestly garments, Aaron’s consecration, the tent of meeting, one-time and ongoing rituals involving sacrifices. Before I lose you, remember that Israelites did not have a set priesthood yet and God was establishing them as being “set apart” from the rest of the world.We are talking about a lineage of people who were slaves previously; traumat...  Read More

Monday, March 8Exodus 26-27Let’s level with one another for a second: if you’re reading through the second half of Exodus, you’re in some pretty dense and altogether BORING reading. I feel like it’s good to name that on the front end. This is the part of the Bible where people reading the Bible in a year start to veer off course around the end of January. Because there’s no action. There are no wh...  Read More

The Third Sunday in LentSunday, March 7In the Catholic tradition there are three pillars of Lent: fasting, prayer, and almsgiving. The third pillar, almsgiving, often gets overlooked in our observance of the season. Almsgiving is a fancy word for charity. It is considered a form of prayer because almsgiving is meant to be a way of giving to God (Matthew 25:40). Just as we make sacrifices through f...  Read More