This month, we celebrated World Communion Sunday. Communion is one of the oldest practices in Christianity. For nearly two thousand years, Christians have gathered around a table, taken bread and a cup, and remembered Jesus. But why? Christians often say that “Jesus died to save us from our sins.” That may be true, but if we stop there, we can miss what it actually means. Sin is more than breaking religious rules. It is the brokenness that damages our relationships with God, with one another,...

Some Bible stories feel like they happened in another world. The woman at the well doesn’t. She meets Jesus carrying a complicated history, belonging to a group his people had distrusted for generations, and not fully understanding what He was saying half the time. In other words, she sounds a lot like us. Well, well, well, indeed. At the well, Jesus asks her for a drink, and before long they are talking about water, marriage, religion, history, and one of the oldest arguments around: Who is...

Water is so common that we rarely stop to think about it. We turn on a faucet, fill a glass, or watch the rain fall without considering that every known form of life depends upon this extraordinary gift. Scientists begin their search for life elsewhere in the universe with a simple question: Is there water? No water, no life. With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that water flows through the pages of Scripture from beginning to end. The Bible opens with the Spirit of God hovering over...