Some farewell-to-2012 reading: 12-31-12

For the last post of the year, I'm offering you some links to some posts you may have missed earlier -- ones that seem still somehow to be relevant.

If, like most of my blog readers, you've already read every word of each of these and memorized those words for the upcoming test, then today will be a day off for you.

But for the stragglers, today is your chance to catch up on some previous, uh, brilliance.

* Some Muslims are talking about "reformation" of Islam, 2-27-12.

* Here's a review of a book that tells a distressing Amish story, 2-21-12.

* And here's a review of Miroslav Volf's brilliant book on Islam, 3-3/4-12.

* Do you know the legend of the dogwood tree's blossom? I tell it to you, 4-2-12.

* I helped lead a 10-day Jewish-Christian study tour to Israel in April. Daily accounts start on 4-16-12 and from there you can follow the trip day by day. (The photo here today is one of many I took on that trip, so dig through the archives. There's plenty more where that came from.)

* When the trip ended, I wrote about what I called Israel's new future, 4-28/29-12.

* There's a really good new translation of the New Testament, 6-12-12.

* I've gone through only about half the year here, but I think I'll stop with the difficult-to-preach homily I delivered at the funeral of my wife's sister, Leslie Von Bargen, who died July 9 in Vermont at age 58, 7-19-12.

(But the archives, which you can find on the right side of this page, go back to December 2004, so if you missed all that, get busy. If you're too lazy to look for the archives on the right, just click here.)

* * *

DOES NEWTOWN NEED RELIGION?

Over the weekend here on the blog I shared a piece asking where the secular humanists were among those responding to the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. From quite the opposite perspective, here's a piece asking why in times of national disaster we must turn to religion.