04179 – It All Matters

Are SMALL things the BIG things in life? It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the...

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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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03210 – If We Christians Don’t…

If we Christians don’t acknowledge our damaged reputation in our culture, we won’t be able to lament the brokenness it has caused. If we Christians don’t lament the brokenness it has caused, we won’t be able to confess the sins that led to such brokenness. If we...

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02995 – The Discipline of Gratitude

In the past I always thought of gratitude as a spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is...

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02901 – Been Bamboozled?

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to...

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02886 – Moral Imagination

We should acknowledge that moral imagination can rise above one’s culture but never transcend it completely. And we should honor the choice to be the one who does not wait for others but stands in the breach—or the choice to declare one’s own humanity in the face of a...

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02767 – Don’t Want to Do It?

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to just pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that he commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that...

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