The Church is not to be found at the "center" of a left/right political world. The Church is to be a species of its own kind, confounding left, right, and center, and finding its identity from the "center" of God's life in Christ.
I take so much delight in the silence of the men in the Christmas story. Zechariah can't speak. Joseph doesn't speak. While the words and emotions of Mary and Elizabeth are unapologetically centered. The sound of Advent is the voice of women.
The life of a creative is a lonely one. You think you are alone as the years go by. Yet, if the stars are on your side, you may discover that you are at the center of a vast circle of invisible friends whom you will never get to know but whom love you. And that is an...
Jesus made it clear that the moral demands of the faith he taught centered on love, justice, and mercy. I believe that God is, here as everywhere, nudging Christians toward love—love for the Creator, love for other people, love for self, love for the world God has...
Before assuming we are being ignored or shunned because of our faith, reflection may show we are using our faith to be abrasive, prove we are right, or socially obnoxious. If our faith makes us jerks, we may not be centered in Christ. Just sayin'.
The metaphor of rebirth, being born of the Spirit, is an image of radical transformation. An old life has been left behind, and a new life has begun. It has a number of metaphorical equivalents in the New Testament. In Paul, dying and rising with Christ, being...
A sobering truth about life in leadership is that we can be very busy and look very important, yet be out of touch with that place in the center of our being where we know who we are in God and what he has called us to do--that place where we are responsive to the...
This internal dying or death has two closely related dimensions of meaning. On the one hand, it is a dying of the self as the center of its own concern. On the other hand, it is a dying to the world as the center of security and identity. These—the self and the...
At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To...
If singing “to God” or “to the Lord” could become our true focus, our passionate center—not the leadership style, the production and staging, or the music performance of our worship—what a difference it would make in our churches! Instead, our people often find...