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Coop's Column - Creation's Choir Sings Hymns of Praise

It takes an act of slowing life down enough to cultivate wonder, which is one of the reasons God bids his children to practice Sabbath—to take a day off in order to savor life for the sheer and undeserved gift that it is, and then in turn to worship God and to give God thanks for it. This column includes an audio recording by Dale Cooper.

Audio | Reflection | February 15, 2012

Coop's Column- All Your Wondrous Works Proclaim

With so much around us to invite our curiosity and to evoke our wonder, a bored attitude toward life is sinful. A day’s adventure in the world ought to end, after all, with an exclamation point of thanksgiving to God.

Reflection | January 05, 2012

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Guarantor

The Spirit is the strange, personal presence of the living God himself, leading, guiding, warning, rebuking, grieving over our failings and celebrating our small steps toward the true inheritance.

Reflection | December 12, 2011

Coop's Column- Spirit at Work: Sender

This Good News - as every lesser piece of good news - is meant to be shared. And shared everywhere, always, by all who believe it.

Reflection | November 30, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Engifter

The Triune God, through the Spirit's ongoing work, equips each member of his body for being suitable helpers to each other.

Reflection | November 04, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Assurer

Doubting is cool nowadays—it’s “in.” Some Christians, a few pastors among them, seem to take no small delight in announcing that they’re no longer sure about the centralities of the faith.

Reflection | October 19, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: The Transformer's Instruments

God’s Word teaches that the Spirit employs four principal means for shaping Christians: Scripture, the sacraments, a person’s life experiences, and time.

Reflection | October 05, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Transformer

“The Holy Spirit is writing us into the revelation, the story of salvation. We find ourselves in the story as followers of Jesus. … Our task is to obey—believingly, trustingly obey.”

Reflection | September 20, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: The Transformer's Aim

The Spirit’s aim is to give people aim in life. He seeks to direct them along a path which shall enable them, at their life’s close, to have marked progress in learning Christ’s deeper ways, in growing to love him more and more.

Reflection | September 20, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Guide

With “two hands,” said St. Irenaeus, third-century bishop of Lyons, God teaches and guides his people—with the Word and the Spirit. In the last column we focused on the Spirit’s role in writing the Word. In this column we look at the Spirit’s work in guiding God’s people as they read and apply it.

Reflection | September 01, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Revealer

How do we humans know what we know or, at least what we think we know? The question of knowledge is one of the most centrally important—and vexingly complex—issues facing humankind today, and cries out for a solid, appropriate answer.

Reflection | August 18, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Protector

The source of this sturdy confidence, this quiet tranquility and hope? It is anchored in the confident trust Jesus’ community puts in his promise to them: “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Reflection | August 05, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Illuminator

In order for God’s Word to achieve its Divinely intended purpose and effect, such an “Aha! That’s me!” response must happen within the hearts of those who read and hear it.

Reflection | July 18, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Exceptional

We focus on the Spirit’s work in creation—more specifically, on his act of creating each human being as a mirror of God.

Reflection | June 17, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work Series

A reflection on how God’s Spirit leads Christians in their lives and helps them read, interpret and apply the Word of God.

Reflection | May 31, 2011

Coop's Column - Spirit at Work: Power to Make Our Lives Anew

When, as part of their Sunday worship, Jesus' followers join to declare, "I believe in the Holy Spirit," they’re saying a mouthful - a large mouthful.

Reflection | May 31, 2011

Coop's Column - Not as Orphans

To acknowledge that the Immortal God, the very Creator of the entire universe, is Father; and to affirm that this Father’s firstborn Son, Jesus Christ, once came to dwell on earth, to suffer, to die, and then to rise victoriously over death.

Reflection | May 11, 2011

Coop's Column - Designed to the Inheritance of Jesus

"Designed to the Inheritance of Jesus" blog entry from Coop's Column.

Reflection | April 26, 2011

Coop's Column - He Shall Come Again

One of my former pastors told me that in his -then- 27 years of ministry in five different congregations he had met only two persons-an elderly wife and husband-who lived in daily excitement at the fact that Jesus shall come again. At every day's beginning they exclaimed to each other, "This could be the day! Let's be ready to greet our Lord!"

Reflection | April 15, 2011

Coop's Column - He Sits at God's Right Hand

That Jesus is now enthroned became a central and glad part of the earliest Christian testimony, and it formed the basis for their heady and unshakable confidence in life and death.

Reflection | March 29, 2011