When we begin to realize that God loves us with our weakness, with our vulnerability, with our failures, we can begin to accept them as an inevitable part of our human life. We can love others--with their failures--when we stop despising ourselves--because of our...
If God forgives us instantly and completely, then who are we to sulk in despair over our failures? If God finds no pleasure in condemning, then we have no right to find some sort of sadistic pleasure in self-contempt. To allow the sins of yesterday, or even an hour...
The sense of being stranded in the midst of life . . . is enough to drain a person’s very personality until there is little left to recognize. Where did the joy go all of a sudden? Where did the feeling of self-confidence disappear to in the midst of this emptiness?...
We need Lent! Our forebears were wise to put its 40 days into the calendar to keep us mindful of the great sacrifice of Christ and the immense love of the Father, the overwhelming grace-full—and grotesque—suffering of the Trinity. In these post-modern times, sin and...
Pro Tip: It’s possible to get an A in Bible and still flunk Christianity.
Plenty of people write to me in the hope of getting some spectacular work to do, and at the same time they fail to see the worthwhileness of the immediate duty God has given them.
Our sense of urgency is balanced by the requirement to wait—to wait on the timing of God, which we can neither predict nor force. And the poor of the world have much to teach us about waiting—waiting with hope, purpose, and active preparation for change; waiting...
The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking...
Risk is stepping outside your comfort zone to a place where you cannot predict with any degree of certainty the outcome of your actions. Risk is taking on something that holds an enormous chance of failure. Most importantly, risk is the only real key to outrageous...
The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing of circumstances and the most bitter environment....