Gratitude keeps us clear that not only do our gifts and our challenges come from God, but that our gifts and challenges are essentially one and the same… Without gratitude, our enjoyment of the world shrinks into cramped self-indulgence and the unscratchable itch of...
I used to say that if I ever wrote a book, its title would be Nothing Truly Radical Happens After Age Six, Except Grace. Grace, that experience of unconditional love, breaks through the whole system and can change anything. All of Christian life could be described as...
When we limit change or even enjoyment in our lives to the times when everything falls into place just as we want it’s a bit like refusing to drive unless every stoplight we come across is green.
Sometimes I just want it to stop. Talk of COVID, looting, brutality. I lose my way. I become convinced that this “new normal” is real life. Then I meet an 87-year-old who talks of living through polio, diphtheria, Vietnam protests and yet is still enchanted with life....
We have lived our lives by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption, that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that...
Jesus tried to change people by loving and healing them. His harshest words of judgment were reserved for those who perpetuated systems of inequality and oppression and who, through religion itself, thought they were sinless and untouchable.
Do not fight to expel the darkness from the chamber of your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter, and the darkness will disappear.
All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you. The only lasting truth is change.
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing make you afraid. All things are passing. God alone never changes. Patience gains all things. If you have God, you will want for nothing. God alone suffices.
The three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.