Human life is sacred: this means that God has consecrated each and every human being—without exception and in all circumstances—as a unique, incalculably precious being of elevated status and dignity. from Introducing Christian Ethics
On the edge of war, one foot already in,I no longer pray for peace:I pray for miracles.I pray that stone hearts will turn to tenderheartedness,and evil intentions will turnto mercifulness,and all the soldiers already deployedwill be snatched out of harm's way,and the...
When I was in my late teens, I wanted to be a preacher. When I was in my late twenties, I wanted to be a good preacher. Now that I am older, I want more than anything else to be a Christian. To live simply, to love generously, to speak truthfully, to serve faithfully,...
If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism on one end and our funeral on another, and we don't know the distance between the two, then Ash Wednesday is a time when that fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that our baptism in the...
So let us be markednot for sorrow.And let us be markednot for shame.Let us be marked not for false humilityor for thinkingwe are lessthan we are but for claimingwhat God can dowithin the dust,within the dirt,within the stuffof which the worldis made,and the stars that...
As we prepare for the Lenten pilgrimage, we brace ourselves for what we might learn and experience through faithful practices that call us back to God. We begin with the smear of mortality on our foreheads, signifying that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Like...
God's mercy can make even the driest land become a garden, can restore life to dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14). ...Let us be renewed by God's mercy; let us be loved by Jesus; let us enable the power of His love to transform our lives; and let us become agents of this...
We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God...A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much....
It is love that calls us into being,and it is love that calls us home.For God is love, and love is the dance of eternity.
We must not interpret God's Word through the lens of our circumstances, but we must interpret our circumstances through the lens of God's Word.