Our sympathy is with Martha. It might seem then that Jesus was unfair o her. After all, the Gospel places great emphasis on deeds. Yet here he raises, not the doer, but the one who sits and listens. It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t appreciate what Martha was doing. Nor was…
According to Tolstoy, a drama does not tell us the whole of a person’s life. What it does is place a person in a situation. Then, from the way the person deals with that situation, his or her character is revealed to us. This is precisely what Jesus does in…
When Jesus sent out the seventy-two disciples he said that their first words on entering a house were to be: “Peace to this house.” They were to be ambassadors of peace and goodwill. Without peace nothing is possible. Peace is not just the absence of war or enmity. It implies…
An Only Child, the Irish writer Frank O’Connor, recalls vividly the night he finally decided to become a writer. He had lost his job with the Great Southern Railway and had no money. His neighbors regarded him as a mad good-for-nothing. Nevertheless, he gave his first public reading of something…
At one time or another, all of us have been ignored or passed over. This can be very painful. We feel that our work is not recognized, and we ourselves are treated as if we didn’t really count. But something worse can happen to us than to be ignored. We…
