2021 was the fourth year I’ve kept this blog, and what a year it's been! Thanks to all of you who have joined me here! As the year winds down, I thought I’d take a few minutes to share the most popular new posts from the past year, along with a few of the year’s … Continue reading Best of the Blog, 2021
I started 2021 with a fair bit of trepidation. It was hard to know what to expect from the year since 2020 had disrupted so much we had so long taken for granted as a society. Steeling myself for what was shaping up to be another difficult year, my theme entering 2021 was “Into the … Continue reading A Year in the Wilderness: A Personal Reflection on 2021
[Below are the words I had planned on giving at my family's Zoom Christmas Eve service this year. As the pandemic took a significant turn for the worse in the days leading up to Christmas, I felt the need to offer a gentler reflection at that service. But, I thought I'd share these words here … Continue reading The Work of Christmas: A Reflection for Christmas 2021
[This is the text of a short homily I gave at a family Zoom Christmas Eve service on December 24, 2021.] -- Picture it: Jerusalem, sometime in the 730s BCE. The world as you know it is being shaken by the rise of an empire in the far northeast, the likes of which no one … Continue reading A Word of Hope: A Reflection for Christmas Eve 2021
I've been doing some preliminary work the past few days on my year-end practices, specifically looking at what I've written here on the blog in 2021. I was surprised by how often the theme of listening has come up here. It's come up in posts on Black Theology and repentance, and in the series on … Continue reading Signs of the Times: Listen.
Matthew Root 