Whether on the stage of world history or in the individual human heart, the reign or rule of God is like seed growing of itself: pregnant, mysterious, fruitful. As a man scattering seed on the ground, we work at preaching and teaching, at supporting each other, at...
Language patterns do not finally change until we use new patterns enough for them to sound natural and normal. That takes effort, and it takes a conviction that such changes are worth the effort.
Is the rich engagement of faith with the deepest and most profound musical expressions of humankind totally off the screen? Are people to be denied this legacy and treated contemptuously? I can only speak from my own experience, which is that people long for what is...
I hope we do not come to the liturgy as spectators, nor for entertainment or even refreshment, though on occasion it will no doubt provide us amply with both. Rather liturgy should be the simple and powerful effort of people in the midst of life to keep festival in...
Transformation is always grace. We sometimes think that although we’re “saved by grace,” we’re supposed to change by effort.
Imagine an ironworker trying to bend and shape a piece of cold iron. No matter how hard the iron is battered, little or nothing will happen. We do the same when we try to deal with the past by reliving regrets about it over and over. We cannot change it. It still...
We cannot discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). Unless we really try, whatever we say, there will always be at the back of our minds the idea that, if we try harder next time, we shall succeed in being completely...
Each of us must discover the directions in which we will find fulfillment. This is—or ought to be—the goal of a lifelong education: not merely to make a living but to find out what living is for. With that understanding, it becomes more obvious that holiness, the full...
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...
Everything worth doing has a hard part. If it didn’t, it would have been done already. Decide that the work is worth doing; get serious about the parts that are worth our effort.