Author: David Ellis

Don: The ministry of Jesus is remarkable for its relationship to hospitality; in particular, eating. The gospel message—the good news about God—is bound up in the common, mundane practice of offering/taking food. The methods of Jesus, and the scathing rebukes of his contemporary critics, are often related to it. Jesus ate with tax collectors and…

The Stranger The Stranger within my gate, He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk– I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth, But not the soul behind. The men of my own stock, They may do ill or well, But they tell…

Don: The kingdom of heaven is a true community where differences are not just accepted but embraced: After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and…

Don: Emptiness is the third and penultimate stage in M. Scott Peck’s taxonomy of community. It is characterized in part by silence and listening. The early Christians felt this after going through the chaos of stage 2, when Gentiles began to be admitted to what had hitherto been a purely Jewish congregation: All the people…

Don: People of all faith communities are united in seeking God, so why do our notions of God divide us? Why are we so polarized? We are divided in big and small ways, by age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economically, politically, and in our perspectives on  such issues as abortion, gun control and education. According…

Don: The need to penetrate the secrets of God seems almost “hard-wired” into the very fiber of our being. It is related to our individual stage of faith.* It could also be argued that it is the root of sin. The temptation in the Garden of Eden was not about a simple choice between Good…

Don: We see in the story of Job the overwhelming desire of Man to penetrate the knowledge of God. In the dialog between Job and his friends two things stand out: One is Job’s particularly insistent questions about God engendered by the circumstances of Job’s life. We want to know and think we need to…

Don: Job was beset by Satan, the epitome of evil. The Book of Job can be divided into three parts: Part one, consisting of Job 1 and 2, can be described as a prologue. It introduces the dramatis personae and outlines Job’s trials and tribulations. His trials are essentially a metaphor for the existential condition…

Don: Usually we think of evil as something that affects us adversely and personally—something that makes us suffer, causes us sorrow or pain, deprives us of wellbeing, disadvantages us, disrupts our happiness or contentment, afflicts us with loss. In short, we think of evil as anything that prevents us from living a joyous life. It…