03890 – Avoiding Self-Righteousness

We are all hypocrites to some degree — passionately promoting ideas we have not ourselves fully lived, taking others to task for frailties and failures not that dissimilar from our own. Knowing this, we should all be more gentle, more hopeful, more merciful with one...

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03881 – How to Live a Better Life

You can't make yourself feel bad enough about the past to change it. Ultimately, self-loathing is as narcissistic as self-torture is wasteful. The fact is, those distracting pursuits help no one…not those injured by your mistakes nor you who made them. There is a...

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03581 – Love: Philosophy of Ministry

A young minister asked me today for my philosophy of ministry in a nutshell. Before I could even think, this came out of my mouth: “If love can’t win it, it can’t be won; if love can’t do it, it can’t be done; in the end, love is the only answer.”

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03232 – Reminders

Every day, I am reminded… 1. Dismissing is easier than listening. 2. Judging is easier than seeking to understand. 3. Concluding is easier than patiently remaining open. 4. Stereotyping is easier than seeing. 5. Profiling is easier than curiously engaging. 6. Other...

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03203 – Love Like No Other

From his hospital bed this morning (one-day stay for a minor procedure), Dad asked me to please help him with flowers and a cake for Mom’s birthday. She is turning 75 this weekend. Once at the store, I had to send multiple pictures of options to him before he was...

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03193 – Building Bridges of Suffering & Joy

A few years ago, my son attended the funeral of a classmate whose life had been tragically cut short by an automobile accident. Though Stan did not know him very well as they were both relatively new to the school, he said the boy was “soft-spoken and very kind.”...

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03177 – The Prize: Our Life Together

Love erases the line between giving and receiving. When love is present, we are all just sharing; there are no haves, there are no have nots, just people who need one another. The foolish distinction between who is giving and who is receiving, between who has much and...

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