Posts Categorized: Faith

Fred Bahnson, husband of Food and Faith Blog author Elizabeth, who wrote “The Way of Manna” back in November, wrote this from warm, sunny Florida for the Christian Century. “It was like stepping into the Nigerian village I grew up in as a missionary kid, albeit one with lots of white people. Instead of running on oil, this place derived its energy from contemporary sunlight; aside from a golf cart here and there, everyone walked or rode bikes. At the moment I am sequestered under a clump of bamboo, hiding from the mid-afternoon Florida sun with a tour group of snowbirds…” Read Fred’s article “Farm School” about ECHO. You just might end up there..

Thanksgiving isn’t just a rote exercise over turkey and stuffing one time a year. Truly giving thanks means making the connection between our daily bread and the Bread of Life, writes Fred Bahnson.

My eldest son loves blackberries. They have been his favorite food since he was old enough to pick them himself. Even when he was quite young he was not deterred by the thorns, which can be vicious on the wild…

This is a hymn dedicated to those participating in CROP walks and those doing other work to end hunger! O God, You Send Us Out to Walk TALLIS’ CANON LM (“All Praise to Thee, My God, This Night”) O God, you send us out to walk, For faith is more than idle talk; It’s more than saying, “Be well fed!” When others don’t have daily bread.

In Matthew 6:16 it says “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.” Jane Larsen-Wigger, preached on this last week noting: I don’t know if you caught it or not, but in these words of Jesus that we just heard, the one little word that catches me up is his use of the word ‘when.’ Jesus says “WHEN you fast . . .” Not “IF you fast . . .” but WHEN.

A few years back, when standing for my Candidacy for Ministry of the Word and Sacrament Examination1 , I started talking about the over-the-top exuberant goodness of God that can be found in a bite of simply grilled salmon on…

Food will not bring us close to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Superbowl Sunday is the largest food-consumption day of the American year, after Thanksgiving. If you’re like me, you probably won’t spend much time thinking about what you eat today. Someone will just plunk some chips or wings or potato skins in front of you, and you’ll down ’em. The Christians in Corinth thought about food a lot, trying to decide what to eat, who to eat with, and why it mattered. The quote above is from one of those Corinthians, and while I love how thoughtful theyre being about eating, I respectfully disagree that food can’t bring us close to God.

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The “tide in the affairs of men” does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: “Too late.” There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. “The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on…” We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.