What Are We Exalting When We Exalt the Cross?
We lift it high so that we can see it, but we must resist the temptation to climb upon it and make it a throne.
Peter Preble
Faith • Grief • History • Hope
Peter Preble
Faith • Grief • History • Hope
Road to Freedom
Twenty-five years after September 11, we remember. But memory raises a deeper question: what do we do with the wounds we carry? Forgiveness does not change the past, but by the grace of God, it can change the past’s claim upon our future.
More Than Our Fear: A Reflection on 9/11
Twenty-five years after September 11th, our grief has become more complicated. Some carry the deeply personal grief of someone they loved and lost; others carry the collective grief of a world that changed before our eyes. And now a generation has come of age knowing September 11th only as history. As memory passes from one generation to another, perhaps the question is no longer simply whether we will remember, but what our remembering will make of us.
Artificial Intelligence Can Assist a Pastor. It Cannot Bear Pastoral Responsibility
Artificial intelligence can assist with research, biblical interpretation, writing, and even pastoral preparation. But the central ethical question is not simply whether pastors use AI. It is what we ask these tools to do, and whether we surrender responsibilities that belong to the relationship between pastor and people.
God Does Not Need Our Help Ending the World: Why JD Vance’s Comments About the End Times Should Trouble Christians
Christian hope trusts that the future belongs to God. It does not give politicians permission to hasten catastrophe, baptize political agendas as “God’s work,” or treat the end of the world as an acceptable outcome. The end of history belongs to God. Our calling is to love our neighbors while we are here.
Spirit-Led Living
What does it mean to let love be genuine in a world that so often rewards anger, contempt, and division? Paul offers another way: a Spirit-led life in which our convictions do not require enemies, goodness becomes something we practice, and we refuse to let the darkness around us determine the people we become.
When a Beloved Icon Dies
Why can the death of someone we never met leave us devastated? Dolly Parton’s death reminds us that public grief is real—and perhaps asks something more of us: How can we be more Dolly?
The Road Before Us
There is something about driftwood that seems appropriate for a threshold moment. Driftwood has been carried by currents it did not choose. It has been battered by waves and pushed toward shores it never intended to visit. The journey leaves marks, and the wood does not emerge unchanged. Yet those marks do not make it worthless. In some strange way, they become part of its beauty.
Rediscovering Samuel West, Part Three: A Minister of God, in the Camp
Samuel West went to the American army after Bunker Hill, or so the familiar story goes. But a newly examined manuscript, an eyewitness letter from Roxbury, and West’s own words to George Washington reveal a more complicated story about what he was actually doing in the camps during the summer of 1775.
The Conversation Continues
Seven Sundays ago, I thought I was waiting for something to begin. Now, as I cross the threshold into a new ministry, I wonder whether the waiting was itself a beginning, teaching me to listen more deeply and ask what love requires of us now.