Human nature, when it is seeking power, wants either to play the victim or to create victims of others. In fact, the second follows from the first. Once we start feeling sorry for ourselves, we will soon find someone else to blame, accuse or attack—and with impunity!...
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and...
Christians, we have maintained, are those who through confrontation with death are given new freedom from the sting of death and so a new freedom for voluntary service to others. Surely if this claim has any truth in it, then it is not our own suffering but the...
To refresh and re-energize, we can learn a few things from our devices. Disconnect, power down, unplug, re-charge, re-connect. When we ignore the 'low battery' warning in life, we risk hyper-anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, and burnout. If our Creator rested on...
The desperate drive to own and control in order to fill our psychic holes, relieve anxiety, fix difficulties, and cauterize old wounds takes root at an early age, and is doomed. It is like going to the hardware store for bread. It doesn't sell bread.
God’s love squeezes in through the tiniest of openings, refracts throughout your entire inner self, and drives out the fear and anxieties that prevent you from becoming who you are.
God loves you—we’ve heard it so much we barely even notice it, and yet…in the part of us that still needs to improve ourselves, have we heard it? In the part of us that stings with shameful memories or…just knows we don’t measure up, have we heard it? In the part of...
Silence is therefore important even in the life of faith and in our deepest encounter with God. We cannot always be talking, praying in words, cajoling, reasoning, or keeping up a kind of devout background music. Much of our well-meant interior religious dialogue is,...
The idea of “sacred space” is important [for worship]. The word “sanctuary” implies safety, shelter, and protection. A worship space communicates an otherness, but also a haven where individuals can come into acceptance, reflection, and space. A congregation is in...
When Richard Steele was about to be jailed for refusing to serve in the South African Defense Force, he had to consider the possibility that he might be killed in prison. “Was I prepared to die for what I believed?” he asked himself. I realized finally that I was, and...