The bedrock of my faith—mind you, I didn’t get to it easily—is that we are loved by God. He loves us as we are, but too much to leave us that way. We are loved by God, and that’s what gives us value. We don’t achieve value. It’s not because we have value that we’re...
Why should a church teach hymns? One basic reason is that hymns are a means of communicating the message of the church. Some hymns are paraphrases of Scripture and others are based on specific Scripture verses. Hymns also effectively convey the church’s theology....
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...
What we really believe is what our actions show that we believe. When we realize that faith is not what we believe but what we do, then we have to take some account of our actions. Given what we profess, we may just have to change how we live, and that may mean that...
Work is not primarily a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to...
Gratitude is the healing ointment for brokenness. It is central to the entire experience and journey of the Christian faith. Gratitude and grace share the same etymology and root meaning. When we properly connect to God, our lives become an endless expression of...
It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
We may think of prayer as thoughts or feelings expressed in words. But this is only one expression. . . . Prayer is the opening of mind and heart—our whole being—to God, the Ultimate Mystery, beyond thoughts, words, and emotions. Through grace we open our awareness to...
There are many religions, many beliefs, but only one faith. We can (and must) learn to take our faith more seriously than the beliefs in which that faith has found expression up till now. The present calls for a different expression, if faith is to have a future....
Anger is not a sin. The Bible tells us to “be angry, but to sin not.” This is a clear admonishment to face our anger and learn to express it in non-sinful ways.