For any of us feeling longing in Advent: Even though Jesus’ experience in the wilderness wasn’t easy—he fasted for forty days and forty nights and was confronted by the devil—the devil was not the only one he encountered there. The spirit sent Jesus into the...
Waiting in hope is an active spiritual practice. It requires a fundamental trust in God's faithfulness and the humility to allow the mystery of God's work to unfold over time.
It is easy to bow heads around a tableful of food and family this week and voice words of gratitude. It is more faithful — as followers of Jesus — to do so with a renewed commitment to expressing ongoing gratitude through generosity. Gratitude-driven generosity...
What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. from Surprised by...
It's hard to convince people that a God they can't see loves them, when a church they can see doesn't seem to like them.
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.-------------------------------Gender-neutral version: Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about God.
For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city apartment or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they...
The decision for hope rests on what we believe at the deepest levels — what our most basic convictions are about the world and about God and about the future. We choose hope, not as a naïve wish, but as a choice with our eyes wide open to the reality of the world and...
Maybe it's conservatives, or progressives, or a neighbor, or a church member who incessantly says horrible things, who acts unjustly toward others, and plagues us whenever we see them. I know, just the sight of them causes the blood to boil. So much depends upon our...
My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.