We don’t have to believe that God is the author of death and destruction in order to believe that God can speak to us, even in sorrow. God’s answer is not an explanation, but the promise of his presence through every storm of life. —————-Gender-neutral version: We...
00270 – Opportunity for Love
This brief lifetime is my opportunity to receive love, deepen love, grow in love, and give love. When I die love continues to be active, and from full communion with God, I am present by love to those I leave behind. from Finding My Way Home
00260 – Eulogizing Lincoln
Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
00259 – Thy Kingdom Come
What kind of kingdom will this be? It will be a kingdom where, in accordance with Jesus’ prayer, God’s name is truly hallowed, his will is done on earth, men will have everything in abundance, all sin will be forgiven and all evil overcome. It will be a kingdom where,...
00248 – Living &Dying in Hope
Christians…live and die in hope. The Christian virtue of hope transforms the virtues of aging… It is why elderly Christians can bear the sadness of memory without being overcome by it, and why they can insist on the truth of a story that challenges the ultimate rule...
00242 – Religious Liberty
Religious liberty is the nursing mother of all liberty. Without it all other forms of liberty must soon wither and die. The Baptists grasped this conception of liberty in its full-orbed glory, from the very beginning. Their contention has been, is now, and must ever...
00206 – Fleeting Temples of Holy?
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill...
00169 – When You Die
Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received—only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service; love; sacrifice and courage.
00165 – Wrong will be Right
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight; At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more; When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death; And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again. from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
00128 – Pain and Resurrection
All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain. Creation has a pattern of wisdom; and we dare not shield ourselves from it, or we literally will lose our soul. We can obey commandments, believe doctrines, and attend church services all our lives and still...