Matthew 3: 1-12 (links validated 10/6/22)

Other New Resources

Recommended Resources

{Based on requests from several members (although I am reluctant to do so since my favorites may not be those of others), I am listing here some of my own favorite resources. FWIW!!]
  • Justice

    Illustrations from the Archives
  • Repentance and Sin

    Illustrations from the Archives
  • Poems for Epiphany (A)(2005)

    Compiled by John Auer
  • Barren Roots, Fertile Rocks and a Fiery Spirit

    by D. Mark Davis
    (lots of Greek exegesis)
  • Visions

    by Jerry Fuller, OMI
    ("Rose Kennedy was the much-admired matriarch of the Kennedy clan. There were very few people in American public life who have endured more heartache than Rose Kennedy. She lost both a son and a daughter in plane crashes. Two other sons, John and Bobby, were assassinated. Her only other daughter is severely retarded and must live in an institution..." and other illustrations)
  • Room for Jesus

    by Sil Galvan
    "I was teaching a Grade 2 class and was asked to produce a Christmas pageant. After much thought and tact, I gave out the various parts for the pageant. One problem was Ralph. He was a big boy for nine years old and should have been in Grade 4. Besides being big, he was clumsy, slow-moving and slow-thinking. He was well-liked by all the children, especially the younger ones..." and another humorous illustration
  • Advent 2A

    by Bill Loader
    (always good insights!!)
  • Stories and Illustrations for Advent 2A

    Compiled by Jack Lohr
    ("I recall the story of the Western visitor to a Soviet zoo who was very impressed to find a wolf lying down with a lamb, with a sign above them extolling this example of peaceful coexistence. He asked the keeper how this miracle could be achieved in the Soviet Union. 'It's perfectly simple if you have a fresh lamb every morning', he replied..." and several more)
  • Exegetical Notes (Matthew 3:1-12)

    by Brian Stoffregen
    (excellent exegesis)
  • Illustrations, Quotes and Lectionary Reflections (Advent 2A)

    by Various Authors
    ("I see Christ coming whenever I hear of individual people doing something that is a service to others - like a lady on the isle of Man here who went out to India some years ago on a visit and realised that hundreds of children were having to live on rubbish dumps, so she came home and started Action Saves Kids..." and many more)

Narrative Sermons

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
  • John the Baptist

    by Author Unknown
    ("Have you ever eaten locusts? Have you ever heard them crunch in your mouth? The shells are crisp, and dry, and crackle between your teeth. They taste almost like grapefruit, or even green persimmons. I don't like locusts. I don't like to eat them...")
  • Preparing the Way

    by Frank Fisher
    ("'What in the world am I doing here? They're never gonna' let me get through the door!' Those words burst from your lips as you stand before the front stairway of Expensive Presbyterian Church: the church whose congregation's so wealthy that all the neighborhood calls it, 'our lady of the golden Cadillac'...")
  • John the Baptist

    Narrative Sermon by Sarah Foulger
    ("I have been called a prophet. If a prophet is one who speaks the truth regardless of the cost, I suppose that is what I am. The truth I am called to speak, however, is as narrow as a single strong reed. I was given but one message to offer the people. Repent. Repent! Turn your life around before it is too late...")
  • John the Baptist

    by Paul Larsen
    ("Do you think God is happy with the way the world is going? Do you think God approves of the fact that one-third of the world goes to bed hungry every night? Do you think God likes to see some of his people homeless? Do you think God is OK with the fact that some people hate other people just because of the color of their skin?...)
  • John the Baptist

    by David Leininger
    ("My name is John Bar Zecharias. I am also known as John the Baptizer or . I AM NOT THE MESSIAH. Some of you Jews came to me last week and asked if I were. I was gratified that you should even consider such a thing, but I repeat, I am not the Messiah. I will answer another of your questions: I AM NOT ELIJAH...")
  • What Did You Have For Breakfast?

    by Don Lincoln
    ("'Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the Day of Judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you.' My cousin Jesus could really preach the altar call sermon couldn't he?...")
  • Are You Ready?

    by Catherine MacDonald
    ("I am an old woman now. but I was there that day. That day when John the Baptist started preaching his message of repentance. My husband didn't know I had crept away from our cooking tent. but you see I had known John when we were children and I wanted to see him again...")
  • Down by the River

    by Larry Patten
  • John, the Baptizer

    by Larry Patten
  • Repent!

    by Norm Seli
    ("Christmas is coming… I know it. The radio is playing holiday music… my wife and I are out Christmas Shopping… NOTHING EXPENSIVE or FRIVOLOUS this year! We've decided. I just saw a remote meat thermometer. You stick in the turkey and you take the remote with you.. any where in the house and you can see the temperature! Come on! I can watch football and cook...")

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2022

  • Sermon Starters (Advent 2A)(2022)

    by Chelsey Harmon
    Like John the Baptist, the desert fathers and mothers (especially during the fourth century) were sought out by ordinary believers who wished for spiritual guidance on how to live. The desert fathers and mothers committed themselves to prayer, simplicity, and solitude—balanced with hospitality for those who came to them. They were valued for their wisdom, espoused in word and lifestyle. Some could be firebrands, like John the Baptist, but most appear to have used gentler words to teach just as convicting messages. One such example is the anonymous wisdom of “an old man” who encapsulates a message similar to John’s by the Jordan River: “The prophets wrote books, then came our Fathers who put them into practice. Those who came after them learnt them by heart. Then came this present generation, who have written them out and put them into their window seats without using them.”
  • Advent 2A (2022)

    by Tony Kadavil
    Leonardo da Vinci painted the fresco (wall painting), “The Last Supper,” in Santa Maria delle Grazie church in Milan in three years (1495-1498). A very interesting story is associated with this painting. At the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted “The Last Supper,” he had an enemy who was a fellow painter. Da Vinci had had a bitter argument with this man and despised him. When Da Vinci painted the face of Judas Iscariot at the table with Jesus, he used the face of his enemy so that it would be present for ages as the man who betrayed Jesus. While painting this picture, he took delight in knowing that others would actually notice the face of his enemy on Judas. As he worked on the faces of the other disciples, he often tried to paint the face of Jesus but couldn’t make any progress. Da Vinci felt frustrated and confused. In time, he realized what was wrong. His hatred for the other painter was holding him back from finishing the face of Jesus. Only after making peace with his fellow-painter and repainting the face of Judas was he able to paint the face of Jesus and complete his masterpiece. Be reconciled with your fellow human beings, says today’s Gospel...
  • Advent 2A (2022)

    from Sacra Conversazione
    In an essay in his collection, Figuring the Sacred, Paul Ricoeur writes: “Hope is both irrational, as being ‘in spite of’ death and ‘beyond’ despair, and rational, as asserting a new law, the law of superabundance, the superabundance of sense over nonsense.” “[H]ope opens up what knowledge claims to close.” For Christians, the appearance of Jesus as the Christ becomes a sign of biblical hope...
  • Advent 2A (2022)

    by David Zersen
    it’s interesting to me that around this time of the year, I annually bake Stollen, a yeast bread that has origins in Dresden, Germany, and that is still popularly made in some families and sold in many bakeries, especially in Milwaukee where I live. The traditional approach to yeast-dough baking requires that after a couple risings of the dough, the baker needs to “punch” it down to take out the air and to strengthen the elasticity of the batter. In more recent years, however, I have used a newer method that allows the yeast to do its own work overnight (or over an 18-24 hour period) so that there is no punching involved. I find an interesting analogy in that exercise to the Law-Gospel approach in preaching. If the yeast represents the power of the Gospel to do its work quietly and powerfully, accepting the challenges involved in the dough’s mass, then it’s wonderful to see the finished product arise without the brutal attack that might otherwise have to take place. Likewise, if in our preaching we seek to explore the ways in which a grace-empowered life can be effective in our world, then we might avoid the strictures that could fashion us to be white-suited law preachers or condemning, stage-strutting tele-evangelists...

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2019 to 2021

  • Straight Talk to Bring Out the Good

    by Jim Chern
    Not too long ago, sitting in a doctors office waiting room, frustrated that I had forgotten to bring some work with me and not getting great cell service that I could catch up on words with friends games or something mindless – I ended up picking up one of their magazines. Who knew they even made these things anymore? The assortment the office had didn’t have a lot of options. There was Oprah’s magazine with her on the cover, once again… People magazine…Entertainment weekly… the most “masculine” of the assortment was Esquire. As I flipped page by page, I came on this story about a Hollywood actor who’s name really wasn’t familiar to me (must be getting old) Shia LeBeouf. What-a Le- What? Anyway the headline writer wins. “Shia LeBeouf is ready to talk about it – the actor sets out to save his career – and his soul.” Got this priest’s attention. While there’s been a history in LeBeouf’s career of embarrassing stories surrounding his abuse of alcohol, what was the breaking point and put him in the spotlight as possibly the last straw took place in the Fall of 2017. He was filming a movie in Georgia and was out partying late one night. At 4:00 in the morning, a highly intoxicated LeBeouf stumbled upon two strangers looking for a cigarette...
  • Sermon Starters (Advent 2A)(2019)

    by Scott Hoezee
    In her wonderful children’s picture book We Were There: A Nativity Story, Eve Bunting (illustrator: Wendell Minor) turns Christmas upside down for us in ways that are revealing. The simple story shows us first a slithering snake, then a warty toad, a scary scorpion, a shiny cockroach, a swooping bat, a hairy spider, and a furry rat all on a journey. Each creature introduces itself and then concludes with the words “I will be there.” As the book ends we are shown more common nativity creatures: fuzzy lambs, doe-eyed donkeys, gentle cows. But as those traditional figures in the stable stand around the manger in which the Babe has been laid by his mother Mary, we see in the corner, unnoticed, that small gathering of the snake, toad, scorpion, cockroach, bat, spider, and rat...
  • Not Even Jesus of Nazareth Can Contain ALL that Christ IS

    by Dawn Hutchings
    I don’t remember when or where I first heard this story about way back when, World War II had just ended, and refugees were loaded into camps until the world could figure out what to do with the millions of displaced people. Back then, refugee camps were filled to overflowing with children who’d lost their families during the war. Apparently, there was this little boy in a camp in France, we’ll call him Andre. Andre couldn’t have been more than about seven years old and he could barely remember the family he lost almost three years before the war ended. He’d been living in the refugee camp, more of an orphanage really, for almost a year. The camp was run by a few nuns who never could scrap together enough money to feed the children properly. But they did their best, and the children were, after all was said and done, lucky to be alive. The children hardly noticed that Christmas was approaching until one of the nuns announced that a neighbour had promised to come by on Christmas Eve to drop off a sack of oranges. Andre had only a vague memory of an orange. The year before a stranger had shared an orange with him and he remembered the taste of the three tiny sections of his share of the orange that oozed precious juice down his half-starved throat. Andre spent the days leading up to Christmas Eve dreaming of having a whole orange of his very own. He thought about the smell of the orange, dreamed of peeling the orange, and carefully considered whether or not to devour each and every section of the orange all at once or whether he should divide it and save a section or two for Christmas morning...
  • Advent 2A (2019)

    by Matthew Johnson
    To call my maternal grandparents thrifty would be a gross understatement. Grandma washed and reused the bags in which sliced bread was sold. Grandpa was unashamed to pick through folks’ trash in an effort to find something that could be repurposed. Until they died a few years ago, their small farmhouse in central Indiana had the same worn and lumpy green carpet, ac­cented by orange-striped wallpaper, from my mother’s childhood. So you might imagine how surprised we all were in the late 1980's when a construction crew showed up to replace their back stoop with a grand concrete patio. It was quite the undertaking. They dug up trees and shrubs, scraped away mounds of dirt, and raked in a dump truck full of gravel. They used forms to make a variety of textured slabs at ground level and even bigger forms to create two levels of beds for ornamental flowers. All that work caused quite a disturbance for the local creatures that lived in the long-untouched soil surrounding the house...
  • Regret Can Lead to Growth, and to Our Redeemer

    by Terrance Klein
    Who knows whom Shakespeare pictured when he penned his 30th sonnet? Yet only in Christ do his words fully resonate. If regret harries you, Christ is seeking you. Lay down the remorse. Embrace the redeemer. Let all losses be restored, all sorrows end. When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste: Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow, For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night, And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.
  • A Journey in Search of Itself

    by Anne Le Bas
    I was deeply moved this week by the reaction of Jack Merritt’s parents to his murder along with a fellow worker in Fishmonger’s Hall last week, by a man who his organisation had been trying to help. In the midst of their grief at his death, his father said he knew that Jack would “be seething at his death, and his life, being used to perpetuate an agenda of hate that he gave his everything fighting against.” His work had opened up a door, he said, to a place “where we do not lock up and throw away the key… where we focus on rehabilitation not revenge” “Borrow his intelligence” his father went on, “ share his drive, feel his passion, burn with his anger, and extinguish hatred with his kindness. Never give up his fight.” I have no idea what, if any, faith the Merritt family have, but these words could have come straight out of John the Baptist’s mouth...
  • And You're Missing It

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    According to some scholars (and viewers), Van Gogh is paying homage to the Leonardo on the right. On the cafe terrace are twelve figures in and among the tables. The central figure (wearing white) has a window behind his head. In the Van Gogh painting, the window pane lines form a cross behind him. The figures are seated at tables on a terrace, rendered in one-point perspective. Those things are also true of the Leonardo. Is the evidence convincing to you? Is it there and we've been missing it all these years because we see a cafe terrace at night and are satisfied with that?...
  • Preparing for Christmas

    by Joe Pellegrino
    We do have to be careful that with all the Advent preparation we make, we don’t make the mistake of Befana in a folktale of the Epiphany. Let me read it to you in poetic form: Befana the housewife, scrubbing her pane, Saw three old sages ride down the lane, Saw three gray travelers pass her door, Gaspar, Balthazar and Melchior. “Where journey you, sirs?” she asked of them. Balthazar answered, “To Bethlehem, “For we have news of a marvelous thing, Born in a stable is Christ the King.” “Give him my welcome,” Then Gaspar smiled, “Come with us mistress to greet the child.” “O happily, happily would I fare, “Were my dusting through, and I polished the stair.” Old Melchior leaned on his saddle horn, “Then send but a gift to the small Newborn.” “O gladly, gladly, I’d send him one, “Were the hearthstone swept and my weaving done. “As soon as I’ve baked my bread, “I’ll fetch him a pillow for his head, “And a coverlet too,” Befana said. “When the rooms are aired and the linen dry, ‘I’ll look to the babe,” But the three rode by. She worked for a day, and a night and a day, Then, gifts in her hand, she took up her way. But she never found where the Christ Child lay. And still she wanders at Christmastide. Houseless, whose house was all her pride. Whose heart was tardy, whose gifts were late, Wanders and knocks at every gate. Crying, “Good people, let the bells begin. “Put off your toiling and let love in.”...
  • The God Who is Revealed in Christmas

    by Ron Rolheiser, OMI
    The power of Christmas is like the power of a baby, it underwhelms in such a way as to eventually overwhelm. There is a greater power than muscle, speed, charism, unstoppable force: if you were to put a baby into a room with the heavy-weight boxing champion of the world, who ultimately would be the stronger? The boxer could kill the baby, but, no doubt, wouldn’t, precisely because something inside the baby’s powerlessness would overwhelm the boxer. Such is the way of God, the message of Christmas...
  • You Are My Beloved Child

    by David Russell
    Peter Gomes was the much-loved chaplain at the Memorial Church at Harvard. He recalled the story of an undergraduate couple who approached him, asking to be baptized. He talked it over with them, they discussed what baptism meant and he said yes, he would be glad to baptize them. They wanted to be baptized by immersion, which was great. He was a Baptist - an American Baptist, at that - but they did not have a baptistry at the Memorial Church. They had a baptismal font, and it just would not do. So they had to find a place to hold the baptism. Walden Pond was a special place for this couple, so it was decided to have the baptism there. Unfortunately, it was October, but they found a decent day and headed off to Walden Pond. Gomes said that he went into the water, the two young people followed, there were words of testimony shared, and then Gomes wrote: I performed the deed as I was taught: down and up, down and up. As soon as I brought the woman up from the water, she being the second, there was a great burst of applause. We were not alone. We looked and found that the shore was full of people who had come out of the woods and were absolutely fascinated at this bizarre activity going on at Walden Pond...
  • Canary in a Coal Mine

    by Danny Stone
    In the 1880’s, Scottish-American naturalist, John Muir, lead an effort to protect Yosemite from encroaching agriculture and development. Muir inspired our nation to establish a system of national parks, refuges, historic sites and recreation areas that would preserve “America’s Crown Jewels.” Muir founded the Sierra Club, which is still a leader in environmental movement. Marine biologist, Rachel Carson, shocked the world with her 1962 book, Silent Spring. Carson detailed the connection between increased pesticide use and plummeting bird populations...
  • Less Fear, More Fruit

    Sermon Starter by Leonard Sweet
    The year is 1986 and the movie is the remake of the classic horror film, "The Fly." Jeff Goldbum plays the eccentric scientist, Seth Brundle, who is working on a machine that will teleport people and things by disassembling their molecules at one point and reassembling them at another. Geena Davis plays Veronica Quaife, a reporter who is writing Brundle's story. Unfortunately, when Brundle tries to transport himself from one room to another, a housefly is inadvertently trapped in the device and its molecules get co-mingled with those of the scientist. Their DNA's mix and as the movie progresses, we see Jeff Goldblum turning into a huge fly. When an unsuspecting woman sees what is happening to Brundle he pleads with her, "Please, don't be afraid." Quaife, the reporter, knows better, however. She tells the woman, "No. Be afraid. Be very afraid."The year is 1986 and the movie is the remake of the classic horror film, "The Fly." Jeff Goldbum plays the eccentric scientist, Seth Brundle, who is working on a machine that will teleport people and things by disassembling their molecules at one point and reassembling them at another. Geena Davis plays Veronica Quaife, a reporter who is writing Brundle's story. Unfortunately, when Brundle tries to transport himself from one room to another, a housefly is inadvertently trapped in the device and its molecules get co-mingled with those of the scientist. Their DNA's mix and as the movie progresses, we see Jeff Goldblum turning into a huge fly. When an unsuspecting woman sees what is happening to Brundle he pleads with her, "Please, don't be afraid." Quaife, the reporter, knows better, however. She tells the woman, "No. Be afraid. Be very afraid."
  • Making Room

    by Jo Ann Taylor
    Mary Luti wrote an Advent hymn that explains this idea of making room for Jesus, even as God has made room for us in his kingdom. It goes like this: If God can find a corner small, a town constricted as a tomb, to house the sweeping Life of all, we too can find a little room. If God requires but little space, an unassuming mother’s womb, to birth God’s spacious Gift of grace, we too can be a little room. If little room is room to spare, a stable’s manger plain and rough, to cradle everlasting Care, we too have room, and room enough. And even if we still mistake a mansion’s pomp for God’s embrace, whatever room we sinners make, Good Love will gladly fill the place...
  • Images of John the Baptist

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard
  • Images of Tree of Jesse

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard
  • Movies/Scenes Representing Baptism

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard
  • Movies/Scenes Representing Repentance

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard
  • Movies/Scenes Representing Judgment

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2010 to 2015

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
  • A Hopeful Imagination

    by Gordon Bannon
    ("Each one of us is a prophet. There is a prophet within, and it is not the part of us that tends to say, you have been bad and you need to beat your self up. It is a part of us which can leave us feeling uncomfortable if we are spending our lives living only for our own profit, with no reaching out to others, especially the poor; it is a part of us which we tend to try to squash/repress if we are too comfortable...")
  • Hearing Wilderness Voices

    by Christopher Burkett
    ("Marco Lavoie hit the headlines the world-over last month when he was rescued after being stranded for three months in the remote Quebec wilderness. What made the headlines wasn't the fact that he had survived in the wilderness alone and supply-less, but that to stay alive he had had to eat his pet dog. An experienced wilderness trekker, Lavoie lost his supplies and only transport in an attack by a bear. To make matters worse, it was his trusted German shepherd dog that scared away the wild bear..." and another illustration about Rosa Parks)
  • Advent 2A (2013)

    by Delmer Chilton
    ("Jeannie and the kids had come up from Atlanta to Nashville and visited a few days. They were supposed to get on I-40 East, but a little over an hour after they left, they were lost. We told Jeannie it was an easy fix, all she had to do was turn around and go back the other way on the Interstate. What Jeannie and the kids did was repent; turn around and go the other way...")
  • Advent 2A (2010)

    by Delmer Chilton
    "A few years ago, a pastor friend told of meeting God on the highway. He said that he and his wife were traveling North on Interstate 85 when a semi began to top the crest of the hill ahead of them heading South. Above the cab, across the front of the trailer were emblazoned the letters G – O – D. As the truck drew closer and my friend saw that the side of the trailer read Guaranteed Overnight Delivery,..."
  • Being Ready Inside and Out

    by Tom Cox
    ("Well, the place looks ready for Christmas and you've sat down in your best chair to watch your favourite programme when you hear a knock on the door. As you answer the door, in barges a scruffy smelly looking man clothed in a camel's hair shirt. His breath smells of locusts he had for his last meal and this gooey mess of honey is still dripping down his beard...")
  • John Versus Jesus

    by Gregory Fryer
    A priest and a pastor from two local churches are standing by the side of the road, pounding a sign into the ground. The sign reads: 'The End is Near! Turn Yourself Around Now! Before It's Too Late!'. As a car speeds past them, the driver yells, 'Leave us alone, you religious nuts!' From the curve they hear screeching tires and a big splash. The pastor turns to the priest and asks, 'Do you think the sign should just say 'Bridge Out'?...
  • Metanoia

    by Denis Hanly, MM
    When my father came to the United States, he met my mother, married and they had three children. My father was a wonderful father, in many, many ways very good. But what happened, he also had a habit of drinking and he was an alcoholic. And my mother was well aware of this so she used to get quite angry if he didn’t come home in time for supper. And he came home much later, sometimes 3 o’clock in the morning, and she would be waiting for him because she knew she had a rule that, if you get drunk, you must sober up out of the house. “I will not have you this way in front of your children.” My father was very humble minded. He really was. And he felt terrible. And my mother would really bawl him out in a very loud voice. And my two sisters and I, in our various rooms, would hear it and we would feel quite sad...
  • Time for a New Recipe

    by Walter Harms
    She was not an indifferent cook, not a timid one either when it came to complex recipes. She had tried many times, always to please her husband whom she knew liked spaghetti at least once a week. It never quit pleased him. He couldn't tell her what it was, but something was not like he had when he parked under his parents' table...
  • Advent 2A (2010)

    by Scott Hoezee
    ("In her wonderful children's picture book We Were There: A Nativity Story, Eve Bunting turns Christmas upside down for us in ways that are revealing. The simple story shows us first a slithering snake, then a warty toad, a scary scorpion, a shiny cockroach, a swooping bat, a hairy spider, and a furry rat all on a journey....")
  • Prepare the Way for Our God! Become the Prophet Praying FOR the Wilderness

    by Dawn Hutchings
    I didn’t know it at the time, but I actually met John the Baptist when I was fifteen years old. She didn’t look much like you’d imagine John the Baptist would look, but she had that same crazy intensity, that same focus on the fact that we’d better change our ways, we’d better repent, and start doing things differently or we’d be in real serious trouble. Lola was my friend Valerie’s mother and she simply couldn’t stop going on and on about the environment and how we were destroy the earth. At the time, I remember thinking she was a bit of a nut-case and on more than one occasion I wished she’d just shut up about it. I was just a kid, and the earth was just something I took for granted...
  • The Women of Ciudad Juarez

    by Terrance Klein
    ("Since 1993, hundreds of women have been murdered around Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso. Most of the victims were young factory workers or students, between the ages of 16 and 24. Amnesty International speaks for many when it suggests that the government's investigation of these crimes has been inadequate. Some of the violence appears gang related; some seems to stem from patriarchal disdain for working women. Whatever the motives, very few perpetrators have been brought to justice...")
  • The Lion and the Lamb

    by Jim McCrea
    ("As many of you know, I grew up in a church in Waterloo, Iowa that was served by my father. They were a wonderful group of people — very loving and kind and charitable. However, there was one member I was always afraid of as a young child. He wasn't physically threatening or violent in any way and you certainly wouldn't have to known to look at him that he had the power to terrorize young children...")
  • In Blackwater Woods

    Poem by Mary Oliver
  • The Ghost of Christmas Past

    by Fran Ota
    ("As Scrooge lay in the bed, the curtains were drawn back, and he saw a figure unlike anything his imagination could have produced - like a child, yet like an old man diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung down its back, was white as if with age yet the face had not a wrinkle, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin...")
  • Advent Longing

    by Ron Rolheiser, OMI
    "Advent is all about loneliness, but loneliness is a complex thing. Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison describes it this way: 'There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smoothes and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind - wrapped tight like skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams..."
  • An Advent Lesson from the Miners in Chile

    by David Somerville
    ("These thirty-three inspired men made a deliberate choice on how to live with their nightmare, and they turned the nightmare into a challenge by forming a mini-society with a division of labor based on the skills of each personality. One, for instance was a natural leader with years of experience. Another had some expertise in first aid and hygiene, and yet a third was chosen to be their spiritual leader...")

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2007 to 2009

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
  • Delighting in Light: Sights and Sounds for Sore Eyes and Ears

    by John Auer
    Elie Wiesel leaves one camp wondering “if it has ever happened before, in the long history of the Jews, that people have ever recited the prayer for the dead for themselves.” He arrives at the next, the ultimate camp, to these words of a young prisoner in charge -- Comrades, you’re in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. There’s a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don’t lose courage. . . . We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer – or rather a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers and sisters, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive...
  • Pointing in a New Direction

    by Rob Elder
    Probably most people today still recognize the name of Albert Schweitzer as the German physician who took his medical skills to a mission station in Africa for the major portion of his adult life, a sort of Mother Theresa of his generation. Fewer will remember that Schweitzer was also a trained theologian who wrote the hottest book in the theological world at the turn of the 20th century, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Even fewer will know that he was an accomplished organist. When he was a young theological student, Fred Craddock3 heard that Schweitzer was coming to Cleveland, Ohio to play a dedicatory concert on a new organ in a large church. Dr. Craddock is now a retired preaching professor, but at that time he was young, filled with himself, eager to show his stuff. He had written a critical paper about Schweitzer’s book, his professor had given him an “A.” He took a bus to Cleveland, and planted himself in the front row in the fellowship hall for the question and answer session after the concert. He was ready, loaded with a page of smart questions, prepared to put the aging old doctor on the spot. But Dr. Schweitzer didn’t begin with, “Are there any questions?” He got up and said, “I thank you for your hospitality, for your gracious reception of me, but I have to go back to Lambarene in Africa. My people there are dying. They are sick and they are hungry. If any of you have in you the love of Jesus, come help me.” Dr. Craddock’s smarty-pants questions turned to ashes right there in his hands. His life was pointed in a new direction...
  • To Live in Longing

    by Nora Gallagher
    ("Another kind of wilderness. This one in Santa Barbara, a soup kitchen where I worked for four years, housed in my church's parish hall. We made the soup out of discarded vegetables given to us by the produce manager of a local Vons grocery store. On this salvage, we fed up to 250 people a day...")
  • Advent 2A (2007)

    by Andrew Greeley
    "When Mollie Whuppi and her friends were in eighth grade, they discovered at one of the parks in their neighborhood a game called women’s softball. It wasn’t really sixteen inch softball like we play in Chicago but smaller softball which is played in most of the rest of the country which is not as civilized as Chicago..."
  • Shekinah

    by Nicholas Lang
    "The National Theatre in Iraq was once renowned for what it no longer possesses for obvious reasons. The Theatre is impoverished..."
  • Advent 2A (2007)

    by Paul Larsen
    ("There is a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that depicts young Calvin marching through the living room where his mother is having her morning coffee. Calvin's head is encased in a large space helmet while a cape drapes across his shoulders down to the floor. His mom asks, 'What's up today?' 'Nothing so far' Calvin replies...")
  • John the Baptist

    by John Loving
    In her book Gospel Medicine, preacher and author Barbara Brown Taylor says that to submit to God's judgement is to be known all the way down. In her words, 'It is about being seen through, seen into, and known for who we really are. It is about the total failure of our defenses and the abject poverty of our pretensions...
  • The Christmas Carol Counterpoint

    by James McCrea
    ("In his book Conversion, E. Stanley Jones tells of his experiences as an evangelist with a Christian community in India, where everyone, including the sweeper, enjoyed one day off each week. The sweeper's work included cleaning the latrines because this was before the days of flush toilets. Typically only the untouchables would touch a job like that. But, Jones writes...")
  • I Can't but God Can!

    by Philip McLarty
    "When you reach the limit of your own strength and ability and have nowhere else to turn, it's often then that you come to know the true power of God's grace and love. One story I'll never forget was that of a farmer-rancher who told talked about a living through a long drought – I think it was back in the 80's. With tears in his eyes, he talked about how helpless he felt watching his crops burn up in the heat of the sun..." and another illustration about AA
  • Metanoia

    by Roger Nichols
    ("This week, I listened again to a sermon I have on tape by a farmer and preacher named Clarence Jordan. His sermon was called Metamorphoses and it's a sermon that's given me a lot of insight into repentance over the years. In that sermon, Clarence Jordan actually says that the word repent or repentance is just not a good translation of what’s in the original Greek..." and another illustration about caterpillars)
  • Advent 2A (2007)

    by Paul O'Reilly, SJ
    ("I can remember the day, in fact the exact moment, when I learned to pray really, really hard. t was when I was about 12 and my family went for a holiday to France. My father drove the car as far as Dover, we got the ferry to Calais and my mother drove down to Paris at least that was the plan...")
  • Advent 2A (2007)

    by Joe Parrish
    ("A while back we had a traveling exhibition of casts of Rodin sculptures, including a large head of John the Baptist. Far from capturing some wild preacher, Rodin brought out in his bronze, a disappointment, a pathos, an agonizing, a despair that biblical word pictures of John the Baptist had never drawn from me before...") (view the sculpture here)
  • Mature Christians

    by Michael Pasquarello III
    ("I've been following the buzz surrounding Willow Creek Church's newest 'highly effective' way of doing church, an initiative called Reveal: Where are you?. After a generation of numerical 'success', Willow Creek Church has apparently learned that attracting large numbers of people is not the same as forming faithful disciples of Jesus...")
  • Both Wheat and Chaff

    by Michael Phillips
    (Crows and ravens are very smart birds. Like parrots, they can be trained to talk and they can even figure out complex puzzles and problems. But, they are also compulsive collectors. They fill their nests with odd bits of shiny metal, gleaming buttons, or bright string – anything glitzy and gaudy that catches there eye is dragged home...)
  • The Nature of God's Peace

    by James Stockton
    J.M. Barrie, who's life is now the subject of a new film, is most famous as the author of The Adventures of Peter Pan, but my favorite work by him is one his several books on Scottish village life; it's called The Little Minister...
  • Shedding Your Skin

    by Leonard VanderZee
    ("In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of C. S. Lewis’s Narnia stories, Eustace commits an act of betrayal that makes him turn into a thick-skinned dragon. One day he is surprised to meet up with Aslan, the Lion, before whom he feels ashamed...")
  • John's Fire and Spirit

    by Bill Wigmore
    ("C.G. Jung is sometimes credited with being the one who set the whole AA recovery thing in motion through an alcoholic patient of his named Rowland Hazard. He was a drunk who'd tried every treatment available - But he always wound up schnockered and in trouble again..." and another illustration)
  • Illustrations (Advent 2A)(2006)

    by Tim Zingale
    ("A poor German girl announced that she was going to give a piano concert. In order to attract people to come, she mentioned in the advertisements that she was the student of the famous Hungarian professor, Franz Liszt. But it was a falsehood. To her dismay, she learned the professor was going to visit her town on the day before the concert..." and several others)

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2016 to 2018

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
  • Bringing Out the Good

    by Jim Chern
    At the height of last month’s bitter campaign and election, after a deluge of awful advertisements from both campaigns that just made people more fearful, angry, politically charged and left people feeling more divided than perhaps any other campaign has done before, there was one TV commercial that was quite different. First off it was a three minute advertisement. In a media world where we’re used to 140 character tweets, and 30 second commercials at the max, that’s already outside of the norm. That it came from Pedigree - a dog food company also seemed odd - as they are hardly used to big budget marketing campaigns like Budweiser or Ford or some national company like that. It opened with pictures of both campaign rallies showing signs saying "Hillary for Prison" "Dump Trump" and so on. The commercial then introduces this "social experiment" that they wanted to try out...
  • Advent 2A (2016)

    by Delmer Chilton
    One day in Nashville I went to the YMCA to pick up my son. As I approached the entrance, a very angry mother barged out the door followed by a girl of about four and a boy about seven. The boy was saying, “I told you I was sorry.” Suddenly his mother stopped, and turned, and bent down, and looked him in the eye and said, hissing between her teeth, “Sorry doesn’t get it anymore. I want you to stop doing it!”...
  • Who Can Be John the Baptist Today?

    by Owen Griffiths
    I sometimes imagine a modern-day John the Baptist to be like Howard Beals, the fictional news anchor in the 1976 film classic Network. In Paddy Chayefsky’s satire of the television industry, an aging newsman goes berserk on camera and calls for Americans to open their windows and scream “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” The character of Beals goads his viewers out of their torpor of avoidance and demands that they feel something about the state of the world. Unfortunately, raw passion alone—without the proper direction—soon reverts back into complacency. We can be ready to change, but the change has to be towards Jesus.
  • Advent 2A (2016)

    by Scott Hoezee
    In her wonderful children’s picture book We Were There: A Nativity Story, Eve Bunting (illustrator: Wendell Minor) turns Christmas upside down for us in ways that are revealing. The simple story shows us first a slithering snake, then a warty toad, a scary scorpion, a shiny cockroach, a swooping bat, a hairy spider, and a furry rat all on a journey. Each creature introduces itself and then concludes with the words “I will be there.” As the book ends we are shown more common nativity creatures: fuzzy lambs, doe-eyed donkeys, gentle cows. But as those traditional figures in the stable stand around the manger in which the Babe has been laid by his mother Mary, we see in the corner, unnoticed, that small gathering of the snake, toad, scorpion, cockroach, bat, spider, and rat...
  • Bear Fruit Worthy of the Gift of Repentance

    by Arlette Benoit Joseph
    The papaya tree is a fascinating tree because sometimes there will be a papaya tree that didn’t bear fruit at all. It will go as far as flowering, but those flowers never produce fruit. It isn’t until the head is cut off, will it start growing again and produce fruit. There is probably a good scientific explanation for that – however for the purposes of this message, sometimes there are things, situations, people even, that we have to cut away from our lives in order for us to bear fruit...
  • Christ and the Status Quo

    by Terrance Klein
    Seventy-five years have not lessened the infamy or the poignancy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s immemorial articulation of America’s agony. All eight American battleships at Pearl Harbor were attacked. Four of them were sunk. That is in addition to three cruisers, three destroyers and 188 aircraft. 2,403 Americans were killed and another 1,178 others were wounded. Many were blown to bits or had their skin burned off by oil fires in the harbor.
  • Repent and Reset

    by Shawnthea Monroe
    The writer Anne Lamott once said that most things can be fixed if we just turn them off for a while and back on, including ourselves. Maybe we are all like my kitchen scale: When our values are off, we need to be reset...reordered, reoriented. That is the essence of John the Baptist's message: We need to reorder our lives, reset our priorities, and return to God...for the kingdom of heaven is here...and we don't want to miss it.
  • Prepare, Repent and Bear Fruit

    by Stephanie Opsal
    A psychological research study published in April of this year suggests that children, from a very young age, can recognize and respond to people exhibiting negative behaviors. An experiment commonly labeled “bribing babies with graham crackers” reveals evidence that children, ages 1-8 have a tendency to avoid interactions with persons exhibiting certain behaviors.
  • Fight or Flight

    by Nancy Rockwell
    Benedict Cumberbatch, in his new film Dr. Strange, shows us the classic Marvel Comics hero battling the evil Lord of death and eternity by holding fast to time, in which he assumes a Christ-like willingness to be slain again and again, and by choosing to do this, by this fight, to hold open the life of the world, which lives in time, and not even the power of death can stop time.
  • Voices in the Wilderness

    by Shiveley Smith
    The impact of the #SayHerName Movement cannot be overstated. This is a campaign that gives voice to “black women’s experiences of profiling and policing,” setting the names and death-taking stories of women, like Sandra Bland and Meagan Hockaday, alongside the names and stories of black males like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. The #SayHerName movement is a resource that makes the public aware of the trauma and loss of life experienced by black females in “civilized” society, who often go unnoticed in the media barrage of reports about police brutality of black males or crime incidents from historically black and/or low-income neighborhoods. With its growing presence across social media and its knowledgeable activists, like Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, the #SayHerName campaign is reminiscent of John the Baptist’s voice in the wilderness...

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from the Archives

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
  • Getting the Led Out: Rooting for Kids and Animals on the Hi-Lo-Way

    by John Auer
    Kris Berggren (National Catholic Reporter), mother of three, author of Advent for Families 2004: The Greatest Gift of All, gives us these three visionary vignettes – A family volunteering as Maryknoll missioners in a barrio near Caracas, knowing that such poverty was not a choice for the people, nonetheless tried to discourage a woman begging at their door. They invited her in for water. She observed some of the few small toys of the daughters Maza and Sarah and said, “Your children have a lot of toys.” The mother of the home tells us, “Maza picked a couple up and gave them to her and said, ‘Why don’t you give them to your children?’ After she left, I just started to cry. The girls came around me and said, ‘We know, Mom. It’s hard.’”...
  • The Coming of Our King

    by Peter Blackburn
    ("I remember being invited to a party held to celebrate a wedding. I arrived late and I knew nobody there but the friend who had invited me, and my part in the proceedings was little more than that of a spectator. Everybody seemed to be in high spirits. They danced and shouted and sang and laughed and played games...")
  • Get Rid of the Junk!

    by Peter Blackburn
    ("Some people are hoarders. They never throw anything away and, if they live in the same house all their lives, the accumulation of bits and pieces can be massive...")
  • My Own Dear Son

    by Peter Blackburn
    ("Years ago, we were in a church with a 'wayside pulpit' - a notice-board with space for a pithy comment on faith and life. It was blank when we arrived - good space gone to waste...")
  • Close to Heaven

    by Dan Chambers
    ("This poem by Philip Booth describes a father teaching his daughter to float, and beautifully depicts how we learn to trust and to be held. 'Lie back, daugther, let your head be tipped back in the cup of my hand. Gently, and I will hold you. Spread your arms wide, lie out on the stream and look high at the gulls. A deadman's float is face down...")
  • Cleaning the Table for Christmas Dinner

    by John Christianson
    ("My mother was a great one for holiday feasts. At Thanksgiving it was her practice to bake about ten pies and leave them to cool out on the porch. That was not quite one pie per person in our large family. At Christmas she would typically fill about ten five gallon egg cans with cookies...")
  • I Pledge Allegiance

    by Daniel Clendenin
    ("When I think about Advent I do not normally think of beheadings, but the connection is uncomfortably closer than you might imagine...")
  • Wilderness Voice

    by Tom Cox
    ("They tell of one man who had the disconcerting habit of standing in a busy city street, pointing his finger at various passers-by and shouting 'guilty'. The reaction of the 'accused' men and women was the same - embarrassment and a quick departure. Deep down we all have something to repent of. Who could bear being judged if the facts of their lowest, meanest act were made public?...")
  • Changing Directions

    by Richard Niell Donovan
    ("a church leader whose daughter had a new baby, approached the pastor to ask him to baptize the baby. The pastor asked a few questions and determined that the baby's parents lived elsewhere and were not active in any church. He explained baptism to the church leader, and suggested that the parents have the baby baptized in a church in their own town..." and another illustration)
  • Advent 2A (1998)

    by Mary G. Durkin
    ("Once upon a time, not so very long ago, a family, admired by many as an example of people who lived a good life, faced a crisis. For his business and civic contributions his church often honored the father, a self-made, multi millionaire businessman...")
  • Being Prepared: Keeping The Vision Alive

    by Richard Fairchild
    ("In The Essential Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin says to Hobbes, 'I feel bad that I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I'm sorry I did it'. 'Maybe you should apologize to her,' Hobbes suggests. Calvin ponders this for a moment and then replies, 'I keep hoping there's a less obvious solution'..." and another illustration)
  • Preparing the Way

    by Art Ferry
    ("A family including three boys were vacationing in France one Christmas. 'For 5 wretched days everything had gone wrong,' the father wrote. By the time Christmas Eve arrived there was 'no Christmas spirit in our hearts'. Besides, it was cold and raining as they went out to eat. They found a drab little restaurant shoddily decorated for the holiday..." and several other good illustrations - recommended!!)
  • Advent 2A (1998)

    by Robert Fitzpatrick
    Walking the streets from the church to the green there was, some years ago, an odd character dressed in a green parka with worn fake fur trim. Let's call him Robert. Robert wore the parka summer and winter. He talked to no one but muttered at everyone. Unclean. Strange. Robert was, during the 80's, as much a fixture in the town as the town hall or the Victorian building housing 'The Men's Club'...
  • The King Is Here

    by Scott Grant
    ("There is a certain force each January when both houses of Congress gather for the State of the Union address and a voice booms out from the center of the House of Representatives, 'Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States'...")
  • Advent 2A (2001)

    by Andrew Greeley
    ("Once upon a time, a pastor invited his parishioners to participate in special mass to which he invited representatives of the local Muslim community. He invited the Muslim guests and the parishioners to a gathering in the church hall after the liturgy. He hoped that once the parishioners became acquainted with people of a different faith tradition, they might respond to the challenge to respect other religious traditions...")
  • Advent 2A (1995)

    by Andrew Greeley
    ("Once there was a man who was a bit of a bum. Talented and successful, he neglected his wife and his children, his work and his friends, his community and his colleagues. He drank too much, lost his temper too often, was cruel too many times. Than one day he had a tremendous religious experience and was transformed totally...")
  • Advent 2A (2001)

    by Roger Haugen
    ("On the television show M*A*S*H, Dr. Charles Emerson Winchester III made it clear what separated him from everybody else. 'I'm a Winchester,' he was heard to say more than once. For him, it was his family name that made him superior to everyone else...")
  • Advent Disappointment?

    by Scott Hoezee
    ("In an interview with John Dominic Crossan, the interviewer mentioned the current fascination with apocalyptic topics as fueled especially by the Left Behind novels. Crossan asserted that what explains this fundamentalist and evangelical fervor for Jesus' second coming is disappointment over his first advent...")
  • Change: The Kingdom Is Near

    by John Jewell
    "Just wait 'til your father gets home!" With these words, Mother would attempt to corral the behavior of my brother Michael and me. After a time those words didn't quite do the trick, so she would say, "Your father will be home any minute." This was better, but nothing would call us to attention and on some occasions -- repentance like the words, "Your father is pulling into the driveway!" Bingo! This produced an instant change in behavior. It even worked when we used it on each other, "Here comes dad," one of us would say and no matter how many times one or another of us cried "wolf" with these words -- they always drew at least a glance out the window. You might say mom, or a brother put "the fear of dad" in us with this simple phrase. We did have a "fear" of dad. Not a toxic, unnerving fear, but a healthy, respectful fear. Dad loved us and we knew it. We felt safe and secure surrounded by his strength. He was not mean, but he was firm. He enjoyed playing with us, but there were rules...
  • The Child Giant

    by Beth Johnston
    "Lovette Weems tells of a group who went on a mission project to South America. Even though they knew what to expect when they actually saw the oppression, the hunger and the many children being buried every day they were barely able to work..."
  • Dream On!!!

    by Beth Johnston
    Once upon a time there was a boy named Monty Roberts who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who went from stable to stable, track to track, farm to farm, ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result Monty's high school career was frequently interrupted. When he was in grade 12, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to do when he grew up...
  • Hope or Hype?

    by Beth Johnston
    "A few years ago I took my nephew to the movie Babe. Farmer Hoggett discovered that his young pig was a good sheepherder and entered him in a shepherding competition, re-naming him 'Pig'. After enduring no small amount of ridicule Pig was finally allowed to compete. Once he learned how to treat sheep with respect, this pig wins the competition hands down..."
  • The Stranger in the Nativity Set

    by Fred Kane
    ("The ritual is familiar. Climbing up into the attic you stumble around there brushing away the cob webs and bumping your head a time or two on the rafters until you find that box marked in bold felt tip pen letters 'XMAS'. Stooping over, you brush a year of dust from its top. When you pick it up it seems lighter than you remember....")
  • Advent 3A (2001)

    by Linda Kraft
    ("A year ago I waited, very impatiently, for a plane to land at Bradley Airport. On board would be my big sister, whom I hadn't set eyes on in 46 years! Shirley was the first child of our father's first family. And I was the first child of his second family born 20 years later. We had grown up in different parts of the country...")
  • Praying for Peace

    by David Martyn
    ("I would like to share a short story about a person who created a little bit of peace this week in a deeply wounded community in northern Wisconsin: 'More than 600 people gathered last Tuesday for an evening of Scripture, prayer and song organized by local churches in an effort to help the community heal after the shooting deaths of six hunters...")
  • Waiting Is

    by David Martyn
    The Nazis arrested Father Delp because he was a member of a group of Germans who dared to think about what a new social order might look like after the inevitable collapse the Third Reich. The dominant order that believes itself to be the centre and the top cannot tolerate people running around who have been shaken up by a vision of some alternative reality. A reality of a God who comes when all our resources are exhausted... Father Delp noted that Isaiah, our Advent prophet, wrote his words of hope in a politically hopeless time, similar to the time of John the Baptist, similar to Germany in the early 1940's, perhaps like other times...
  • Holy Fishes

    by Frederick Niedner
    ("John's alarming forecast has the look of a scenario known to many who grew up in corn-growing country. Every fall the harvested ears went temporarily into 'corn cribs' of various shapes and sizes....")
  • The Call of the Prophet

    by William Oldland
    ("In the song The Prophet by Michael Card we hear the words: 'I am the prophet and I smolder and burn. I scream and cry and wonder why you never seem to learn. To hear with your own ears, with your own eyes to see, I am the prophet won't you listen to me....")
  • John Who?

    by John Pavelko
    ("If you were writing a movie about that first Christmas what would be your story line? A love story featuring Joseph and Mary would appear to be a natural. A drama about how their love evolved from the prearranged contract between their parents to a romantic relationship between two lovers would certainly capture the imagination of the audience...")
  • Pruned by Fire; Watered by Grace

    by Gary Roth
    ("I think of a friend of mine in my first parish. Like the Pharisees, he wasn't a bad man at all. He served on Church Council. You could always depend on him to help around the church, and he was a pleasure to be around. But he was somewhat inattentive to his family - something he had picked up, I supposed, from his dad...")
  • A Voice in the Wilderness

    by Gary Roth
    ("Every pastor has someone who stops by regularly for a few dollars, a little conversation and prayer. So it is with Pastor Shulz of Our Redeemer. Walking the streets from the church to the green in the center of town, there is often an odd character dressed in a green parka with worn fake fur trim who meets him...")
  • Let Us Have It!

    by Bradley Schmeling
    ("One time I'd been left in charge of my little brother for an afternoon. He wanted pizza, so I graciously allowed him to put one of those French-bread pizzas in the oven. I also decided that he should learn something about sharing. I really wasn't very hungry, but I told him that he needed to give half the pizza to me. His sin was immediately apparent when he said, 'No'...")
  • The Promise of Hope

    by Billy Strayhorn
    ("I saw a short video of a mom and her daughter putting up the Christmas tree, talking about the work that needs to be done in the next two days getting ready for the party. The daughter says, 'Mom, I'll clean the house if I don't have to go with you all to see Uncle Steve.' Mom says, 'Nice try. But you're going'...")
  • Nearer Than You Think

    by Alex Thomas
    ("In the novel the Second Coming, a little group of broken people set out to rebuild the human race. There is a girl whose mind has been blown by shock therapy, a man whose heart is damaged, a legless carpenter, a wheezy old nurse suffering from hypertension, a missionary priest who has become so inept that all he can do is remember a few short prayers for the blessing of children...")
  • Rearranging Our Price Tags

    by John Timmer
    ("Our eyes naturally focus on stars-baseball and football greats, movie actors, TV personalities, famous authors, rock stars and tennis players. These are the people who dazzle us and dominate our magazines and television screens...")
  • The Messiah

    by Mark Trotter
    ("Most of the texts come from the incomparable poetry of Isaiah. The Oklahoma analogy lends itself to point out that Handel did not select the texts.......")
  • An Earth-Shattering Event

    by William Willimon
    ("At the beginning of this century, Albert Schweitzer wrote a book which shook both the church and scholars, and has continued to shake us: The Quest for the Historical Jesus. One of Schweitzer’s contentions was that Jesus, like many Jews of his day, believed that the world was coming to an end in a great cataclysm. God was going to end the world soon...")
  • An Honest View of Yourself

    by Tim Zingale
    ("A well known lecturer related that he had been a coal miner in his boyhood and told about first day as a mule wagon driver. Before that day his father sat down and told him about all the dangers he might encounter and warned him to drive with caution. There was one spot called 'Deadman's Fork'..." and other illustrations)

Other Resources from 2019 to 2021

Other Resources from 2013 to 2015

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Other Resources from 2010 to 2012

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Other Resources from 2016 to 2018

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Other Resources from 2007 to 2009

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Other Resources from 2004 to 2006

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Other Resources from 2001 to 2003

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Other Resources from the Archives

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Resources from the Bookstore

Children's Resources

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

The Classics

(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link with your mouse and select “open in a new tabâ€. Then, when you have finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to where you left off on this page. FWIW!)

Recursos en Español

Currently Unavailable

  • Imperatives of Discipleship: Prepare!

    by John and Robin McCullough-Bade
  • Sermon Prep

    by Wesley White
  • How to Prepare for Christmas

    by David Russell
    ("There was a Doonesbury comic strip where the minister, Rev. Scot Sloan, is talking to a couple inquiring about church membership. He describes the basic approach of his Little Church on Walden: "I like to describe it as 12-step Christianity. Basically I believe we're all recovering sinners. My ministry is about overcoming denial, it's about recommitment, about redemption. It's all there in the brochure...")
  • Advent 2A (2016)

    by Richard Eslinger
    Recently a pastor in the Appalachians of Eastern Kentucky was enrolled in a Doctor of Ministry program and had settled on his doctoral project. An epidemic of prescription drug abuse was sweeping through the region and he had a plan. He would enlist the other clergy of the congregations and parishes in his county seat town to form an alliance to combat the drug abuse, using legal means, counseling resources, and special worship services as means to turn the tide. He spoke to his fellow pastors individually, but was not able to recruit one colleague to join him in the fight. For some, there simply was not time in their busy schedule to take on one more activity. But for most, the refusal to join in this ministry went something like this, “Look, Pastor, all we have to do is wait a bit longer. See, Jesus is coming real soon and will set things right. There’s no need for us to be about the work that God is about to do.” The pastor in the doctoral program thought his project was a failure. But his student peers and his faculty all responded with one voice: “No, your project is a success. You sought to explore whether these clergy would join together to be in ministry against a terrible plague that is destroying the families and communities of your parish. You succeeded in learning the answer to that questioned. It was your colleagues who failed the test.”...
  • The Peceable Kingdom

    by David Martyn
    ("When I get lost I think of the old joke that the evangelist Billy Graham tells. He arrives in a small town to preach a sermon. Wanting to mail a letter, he asks a young boy where the post office was. When the boy tells him, Dr. Graham thanks him and says, 'If you'll come to the Church this evening, you can hear me telling everyone how to get to Heaven.'...")
  • Lexegesis

    by David Buehler
  • Advent 1A (1998)

    by K. M. Cusick
  • Christmas Conflict

    by Dave Russell
    The story is told of a king who offered a prize to the artist who would paint the best picture of peace. Artists from far and wide entered the competition. The king looked at all the paintings, but there were only two that he really liked and he had to choose between them. One was of a calm lake. The lake was a perfect mirror, and peaceful towering mountains were all around it. Overhead was a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. Everyone who saw this painting thought that it was a perfect picture of peace. The other picture had mountains too. But these were rugged and bare. Above was an angry sky. Rain was falling and lightning was flashing. Down the side of the mountain tumbled a foaming waterfall. At first glance, this painting did not look peaceful at all. But on closer inspection, behind the waterfall there was a small bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush a mother bird had built her nest. There, in the midst of the rush of water, sat the mother bird on her nest... perfect peace.
  • Adviento 2

    por Ángel F. Méndez Montoya, OP
  • Make His Paths Straight

    by Dave Risendal
  • Advent 2A (2019)

    by Jude Siciliano, OP
  • Adviento 2A (2019)

    por Jude Siciliano, OP