Connected Christianity

As of chapter 37 of Genesis, Joseph becomes the main protagonist of the story. The rest of the book either follows his life or its ramifications. Still, even though he’s basically the hero for the rest of the book, I can’t read chapter 37 without thinking, “Joseph! What are you doing? Are you trying to […]

Apparently there is fighting in the French countryside. Many of France’s old churches, which are hundreds of years old, are falling apart. Factors like population shift to urban areas, lower church attendance, and aging buildings have made church upkeep a major issue. When the price tag for renovating an old church building, if only to […]

Ah, reconciliation. It’s never easy, but it’s always healthy. I suppose most things that are healthy for us don’t come easy–or taste very good. In Genesis 33, the brothers Jacob and Esau work through the process of reconciliation. They’d cut off their relationship almost twenty years earlier, when Jacob had stolen from Esau, who vowed […]

Genesis 29 tells one of those Bible stories that just always seems a little weird. The first part is sweet: Jacob sees Rachel, it’s love at first sight, he wants to marry her and is willing to work seven years for her hand in marriage, “but they seemed like only a few days to him […]

Apparently, churches around the country are trying to combine the divine awesomeness of God with the pixelated awesomeness of video games. Now, I completely love video games, and I’m also on a life-long journey to explore the Divine Mystery that is God. But do I think the two should be combined? Not so much.

Following God’s word can be tough. Even when God spoke audibly to us, like with Adam and Eve or Cain and Abel, people seemed to have a difficult time following the rules and guidelines set before them. How much more difficult is it for us now, with our lives so far removed from people of […]

In Genesis 28, Jacob has the experience of his life. He might not realize it, but he’s really lucky in this passage. Sure, he’s basically on the lam, running from his brother who wants to kill him, so his mother sends him to her brother’s house and tells Jacob’s father that he’s gone looking for […]

The story in Genesis 25 always makes me uncomfortable. The history of the patriarchs in Genesis started with Abraham and follows his descendants through the generations. The narrative focuses on a key figure in each generation as the role of patriarchal protagonist is passed down from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph. The protagonist […]

I’ve heard of church splits before, but convent splits? Apparently it can happen. The Santa Clara convent in Bari, Italy, had dwindled down to only three nuns: two sisters and the Mother Superior. That was before the Mother Superior frustrated the sisters so much that they broke their vow of silence and fought back, literally.