David Kuo in his book Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction tells a story of how love became for him an unreal sentiment rather than a working reality. A disillusioned member of the Christian Right, Kuo's story includes a timely message in this election year for all us who tend to get too wrapped up in politics.

Perhaps like me you received an attractive flyer in the mail for Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, edited by David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor and published by Westminster John Knox Press. The twelve-volume series is a massive undertaking. Each individual lectionary passage will have four brief articles accompanying it, addressing biblical, theological, hermeneutical, and pastoral issues in the text. With four texts per Sunday and three years in the lectionary, that comes to about 2,500 articles total.

Christians, Jews and Muslims rarely agree on theological doctrines such as the identity of Jesus, and conflict often arises when one group tries to impose its beliefs on another. But common ground can be found when people of different faiths come together to try to improve their communities, as is now happening in more than 170 congregation-based community organizations across the United States. I'm convinced that the future of religious harmony lies in grass-roots work for social change.

These are exciting . . . and thoroughly terrifying times for the church we love. Exciting - if we see that God seems to be declaring another Isaiah 43:19 in this The 21st Century of Our Lord.

In Lent, we think a lot about suffering, injustice, and oppression. As we do so, hopefully, we are also spending a lot of time confessing. For we are all involved in systems that create suffering for others.

When I run I like to run outside. I enjoy being out in the elements and I know that the energy expended on each step has a purpose to it, creating momentum that allows my entire body to move forward as I cover the ground and go somewhere. Running on treadmill is very different; I stand in place, run hard, use a lot of energy in the process. I get hot, sweaty and tired and go absolutely nowhere! I fully understand why I go nowhere on the treadmill, its because there is a 3hp motor spinning a belt in the opposite direction to which I am trying to run and because it matches my speed I stay in one place, there is no forward movement.