“And behold [David], you are caught in your own evil, for you are a man of bloodshed!” (from II Samuel 16:8)

A month ago Frederick Buechner died at age ninety-six. During that windfall of years, in which he served as a high-school chaplain, was ordained a Presbyterian minister, raised a family, and worked his unusually enchanted way with words, Buechner wrote a book that I read again each year.

“You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

J. Ryan Smith is a transplanted prairie boy and a first year PhD student at Wycliffe College who studies divine violence in the Scriptures.

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