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Every year Christians prepare for the birth of Christ. We remember how Jesus was born to Mary and Joseph. We reflect on the beauty of the incarnation—God becoming human and dwelling among us. We often celebrate the greatest gift by giving gifts to one another. We do this every year. Advent helps us…

The arrival of Christmas announces to the world again that God walked among men through the supernatural conception and virgin birth of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ (Matthew 1:23). To me, the Advent season brings a celebration of both birth and rebirth. While I revel in the yearly yuletide…

Paul’s writings personify gratefulness. Thirty-four times he gives thanks or encourages others to be grateful. I learn from Paul some of the things for which I should be thankful. Paul was ever grateful for the reality of personal salvation. It was difficult for him to understand how God could “…

It is easy to thank God when we get what we want the way we want it. Those are the things we usually count, naming them one by one and being pleasantly surprised at what the Lord has done. Counting blessings is good for anybody. No honest person could look these over and not thank God. The…

It was a time of great discouragement. I was on maternity leave from my job, expecting our fourth child, and my husband was ill and temporarily out of work. With very little income, three small children in school, and mounting medical expenses, the unpaid bills had accumulated. More serious was the…

In 1995, a hurricane battered the beautiful Caribbean island of Antigua. On Sunday morning following the hurricane, a congregation there, All Saints Church of the Nazarene, gathered for worship.   The congregation had to stand that morning. The pews were damaged, the roof was gone, and the wooden…

He had made that walk countless times, yet as he passed through the streets of Wittenberg, his pace was slower than usual. He seemed to be lost in thought, as if he were debating some great issue in his own mind. It was October 31, 1517, and as Martin Luther reached the doors of the church, he…

I can either let this nag my blood pressure to unhealthy heights, I thought, or I can try to make the best of it. I lifted a prayer asking for an extra dose of grace. The flight from Los Angeles was overbooked. Not one spare seat. When I got to my assigned seat, 24-D, it was already taken. There…

I don’t even remember her name, but I’ll never forget what she said. It happened at the conclusion of a Nazarene church service. People were streaming out of the house church in a city southeast of Havana, Cuba. The crowd seemed to be everywhere. The people had filled the house, and there were…

When I became rector of the Nazarene Theological Seminary in Brazil in 2019, I remembered that this institution influenced my entire family to become Nazarenes. My father was previously a Baptist pastor in Campinas, São Paulo. I wanted to study in a seminary, but there weren’t any Baptist…