Just as worship begins in holy expectancy, it ends in holy obedience. If worship does not propel us into greater obedience, it has not been worship. To stand before the Holy One of eternity is to change. Resentments cannot be held with the same tenacity when we enter...
I believe God dwells with those who make love their aim. And there is no sentimentality in this love; it is not endlessly pliable, always yielding. Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love...
The feeble gospel goes back to Jesus as our model, our example, and is much concerned with moral injunctions. It sees his teaching as a fine set of ideals at which to aim. It may not do much harm but it has no power to change your life: it is a faith built in sand...
The gospels remind us that Jesus, before he taught the people, felt compassion for the multitudes that followed after him. Sometimes he felt it even to the point of forgetting to eat. How did he put his compassion into practice? He multiplied the loaves of bread and...
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and wrong…because sometime in your life you will have been all of these.
God will continue clipping until so-called Christians repent of racism and bigotry; until Skid Rows are replaced by avenues of compassion and streets of hope; until child neglect is replaced by child nurture; until murder, abuse, and rape yield to mutual respect… God...
Jesus was not interested in making people religious, but leading them to a loving relationship with himself, and therefore with God. He offered forgiveness and healing to sin-sick souls as the basis of new life, opening up a path of discipleship, compassion and...
Many of us are unable to “see” things “as they are,” because we see “as we are.” Until we change, until we learn how to love and forgive, to live with gratitude, generosity, and compassion, we will be blind to what is “really real,” to what is of ultimate worth and...
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
I’m not interested in whether you’ve stood with the great; I’m interested in whether you’ve sat with the broken.”