The world has been abnormal for so long that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.
In worship we are ascribing greatness, goodness, and glory to God. It is typical that we put every possible aspect of our being into it, all of our sensuous, conceptual, active, and creative capacities. We embellish, elaborate, and magnify. Poetry and song, color and...
What if [instead of just the “wow” moments in worship] we actively pursue the joy of the ordinary? What if in this season of Lent, when we verbalize our “ashes to ashes” condition , we give God glory for the profound nature of His handiwork without feeling that we...
The Scriptures include or allude to just about every approach to worship there is: organized, spontaneous, public, private, simple, complex, ornate or plain. Yet there is no comment anywhere about one way being preferred over another. Rather, it is the spiritual...
God is creative and likes to be worshiped in creative ways—and he calls us to grow in our worship. He did not stop being creative when Handel or Bach or Fanny Crosby died. He continues to shape how music expresses our worship differently in each generation. This is a...
I have a priest friend who points out that the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty. I think God intended that—it is a way of making us creative instead of smug in our belief. God plants in us the seed to love and worship God, and the seed is enough to make us...
Restless people who seek signs and wonders are often unable to accept the commonplace as a gift that is not so commonplace. The genuinely miraculous character of life itself, the web of loving relationships that are a part of that life, and the gift of human...
At the center of the beloved community is good news—a framing story that calls humanity to creativity, harmony, reconciliation, justice, virtue, integrity, and peace, because these values reflect the character of the Creator whose world is our home and in whose...