…the promise of the Gospel [is] not that we can be in control, or even that God is in control, but rather that God in Jesus joins us in our out-of-controlness, holds onto us, and brings us to the other side.
Imago dei, the image of God… We resemble God in our capacity to love, to reason, to feel, to relate to other creatures, to imagine, to plan, to create, to contemplate, and in many other ways. We are an image of God. A scratched-up one, badly damaged by sin, but the...
Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubt in God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice;...
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing make you afraid. All things are passing. God alone never changes. Patience gains all things. If you have God, you will want for nothing. God alone suffices.
If I were going to begin practicing the presence of God for the first time today, it would help to begin by admitting the three most terrible truths of our existence: that we are so ruined, and so loved, and in charge of so little.
Christianity, we might say, is driving around with a loaded gun in its glove compartment, and that loaded gun is its violent image of God. It’s driving around with a license to kill, and that license is its Bible, read uncritically. Along with its loaded gun and...
Do not grieve or complain that you were born in a time when you can no longer see God in the flesh. He did not in fact take this privilege from you. As he says, “Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done to me.” —————Gender-neutral...
Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising God until we ourselves are an act of praise.
It is all right for me to pray for the small, silly things—Do not let me fall, Do not let me get laryngitis—as long as I hand the prayer, no matter how minor, no matter how foolish, to God. Your way, Lord, not mine.
“God won’t give you more than you can handle” is idolatry of self-sufficiency hiding behind spiritual sound words. The truth is, people are dealing with more than they can handle all over the world. That’s why we need God and why he’s given us each other. I know. I’ve...