True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Buechner’s definition starts with the self and moves toward the needs of the world; it begins, wisely,...
Life, with its achievements and challenges, its joys and sorrows, gifts us with many opportunities to grow and serve. We serve when we willingly share the wisdom we have gleaned from our life experiences. The spirit of our life is made visible in the spirit of our...
We have resorted to magical categories and overlook God’s gift of sacred significance in the commonplace events of our lives. As a result, we may choose to take a particular job because of what we describe as God’s leading, but then do the job with little or no sense...
We are neither big nor small but what we are in the eyes of God, and as long as we surrender ourselves totally then God can use us. The emptier we are, the more room we give God to fill us. Even God cannot put anything into what is already full. By ourselves we may be...
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever...
And ultimately forgiveness is a gift of grace rather than an act of will. I have to be willing to forgive, but I cannot will myself to forgive. I can forgive with my mind, but forgiveness is finally a matter of the heart. And the forgiveness of the heart comes from...
The pageant proceeded as scheduled—Angels, Shepherds, Wise Men, Mary, Joseph, the Christ Child—Children reciting their lines while parents beam with pride. The lights dim, children freeze in place; all is quiet. Then the children get up and leave; the pageant is over....
The first evangelists were shepherds. It was a task for which they had no skill, no special gift. No theological teaching or individual training. They had no organization to go before them and no literature to leave behind them. What they had, and all they had, was a...
God has built a highway for the people. This is such a safe and straight road that no one can become lost. This road of faith is what God gives to the people. Along it they shall travel to the promised land. God gives the people not only natural sustenance, like water...
Every morning when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hour will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others.