As I was lying on a gurney in pre-op awaiting knee replacement surgery three days before Christmas, before the “happy drugs” were administered, I noticed a painting on the wall beside the gurney. It was rather nondescript, a field of blue flowers in a garden of rocks...
God,Grant that I may pass through the coming year with a faithful heart. There will be much to test me and make weak my strength before the year ends.In my confusion I shall often say the word that is not true and do the thing of which I am ashamed. There will be...
The decision for hope rests on what we believe at the deepest levels — what our most basic convictions are about the world and about God and about the future. We choose hope, not as a naïve wish, but as a choice with our eyes wide open to the reality of the world and...
The world is growing more integrated, not less. Studying moral leadership is a way forward in a world where earnest people of faith have no choice but to speak to each other, not just about each other. from Moral Leadership for a Divided Age
When you have a choice and don't make it, that is, in itself, a choice.
We all die eventually; we have no choice in the matter. But there are degrees of death before the final physical one. If we are honest, we acknowledge that we are dying throughout our life, and this is what we learn if we are attentive: grace is found at the depths...
Once I gave up hunting for villains, I had little recourse but to take responsibility for my choices... Needless to say, this is far less satisfying than nailing villains. It also turned out to be more healing in the end.
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand...
Often hell is portrayed as a place of punishment and heaven as a place of reward. But this concept easily leads us to think about God as either a policeman, who tries to catch us when we make a mistake and send us to prison when our mistakes become too big, or a Santa...
[from his time as an inmate at Auschwitz:] The experiences of camp life show that humanity does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Humanity can preserve a...