[An] airport is a place of connection, not a destination. Its job is to help people get somewhere else. An airport-centric world of travel would be dull and frustrating, no matter how nice the airport is. When the church thinks it's the destination, it also confuses...
I think Jesus would have said, "It's not about me." During his lifetime, he deflected attention from himself. In an illuminating passage in our earliest gospel, when a man addressed him as "Good Teacher," Jesus responded with, "Why do you call me good? No one is good...
Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamor of the world.
If we believe God loves the world, it should change how we live in the world. It means we love all people.
It makes no sense to cling to small hopes. We are emboldened to ask God for something bigger. The same faith that looks clear-eyed at the immensity of the forces arrayed against God is the faith that affirms God's miracle-working power. Trust in miracles is, in fact,...
Who stands fast? Only the person whose final standard is not his or her reason, principles, conscience, freedom, or virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God--the...
Once having the vision [of a God-intoxicated life], the second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are. Obey now. Use what little obedience you are capable of, even if it be like a grain of mustard seed. Live this present moment...as you now sit in your...
One evening soon after, Sandy and I fell into a conversation about...the crow in the tree. Sandy said, "You know what came to mind when I saw that crow perched over us? I thought of the Native American proberb about the eagle and the crow in each of us. The eagle...
Riches, both material and spiritual, can choke you if you do not use them fairly. For not even God can put anything in a heart that is already full. One day there springs up the desire for money and for all that money can provide--the superfluous, luxury in eating,...
I am sometimes amazed, even alarmed, at the extent to which people judge ministers by their preaching, and preaching by its rhetoric. To do so is to make the entirely spurious but nearly universal assumption that God is better served by a poet than by an accountant....