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"Look at the birds of the air," said Jesus. Our lives are more akin to the frantic scurrying of rats and the disciplined marching of ants.

The prayers of the people call us. When we answer, we invite the possibility that it is we who will be poor, hungry, sick, and in prison.

In response to our request for essays on the topic mistake, we received many compelling reflections. Here is a selection.

Around the world, apples have become a symbol of good health. And around the world, lots of people can't afford them.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are connected as older and younger siblings. It's an asymmetrical relationship.

It's up to pastors to remind each other to talk to people instead of about them.

A fast-growing number of people do not have a religious first language. And many churches don't seem eager to connect with them.

Life in limbo for an immigrant teen

"The biggest driver of success against global poverty is economic growth—but not any kind of economic growth."

On Saturdays at First Presbyterian, the congregants know good jazz when they hear it. But the event is first of all a church service.

Did Jesus mean that all the things we mean by accomplishment, and maturity, and reason, and progress, are actually small niggling things that we must finally shuck and lay aside, in order to again be like children, spiritually open and emotionally naked and constantly liable to giggling?

The priest faces inward, toward liturgy and the sacraments. The layperson faces outward, toward everything else—everything.

Populism is a predictable recurring feature of any society that is unwilling or unable to be as democratic as it claims to be.

Encounters with God happen, and they are known by their liberating effects. How can confirmation class support such encounters?

"Maybe 5 percent of refugees are ever resettled. Meanwhile, human life is always more than survival."

Harvesting wild greens always returns me to our species' hunter-gatherer roots. Not so long ago, this is what people did the world over.

At St. Peter's, the font beckons Detroiters to wade into freedom—while the bottled water around it brings to mind the principalities and powers.

Twice a year I take a day off to undo the work I get paid to do. This sounds batty, but it's becoming a spiritual practice of mine.

A narcissistic demagogue is different from a racist-völkisch one. But Trump's ideological unpredictability bears its own dangers.

Efforts to avoid the term proof are mistaken—both as a reading of Aquinas and as a broader claim about whether God exists.