The God who in and through Jesus reveals Himself is human. And the human being who emerges in and through Jesus is divine. This is the specific characteristic of the Christian experience of God and human beings, one that is different from that of Judaism and paganism....
One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God's arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is...
The authors of the Bible did not have enough faith in humankind to believe that unrestrained pursuit of self-interest would promote common welfare. ...Government is the only power of the poor. It is not an intruder on the happy campers on the economic field....
Carlo Carretto, one of the great spiritual writers of our time, once spent a number of years living by himself, as a hermit, praying in the Sahara desert. When someone asked him what he thought he heard God say to him in all that silence and after all that prayer,...
If we are to recognize the ultimate person on our own Emmaus Road we need a heightened awareness. We need to have a sense of expectancy day by day that Jesus will reveal Himself to us. Expect the unexpected. Psychologists are telling us now that we don't believe what...
If we go to worship for entertainment, we ought to admit it's not much of a show. If we go for self-improvement, therapy could be more useful. If we go to feel better, breakfast in bed with the newspaper might be smarter. The only good reason to go to worship is to...
Naturally, when Christians come together they meet not God but each other. They were raised in twelve years or so of the school-type atmosphere, so they're used to assembling in a school-type manner... Maybe because of this, many Christians never worship. They spend...
Harvard religion professor Diana Eck told about being asked once by an elderly friend in India: "Do you really believe that God came only once, so very long ago and only to one people?" She said, "The very idea that God could be so stingy as to show up only once, to...
The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of the pain, thanking God during the trials, trusting Him when we're tempted to lose hope, and loving Him when He seems so distant and far away. At my lowest, God is my hope. At my darkest, God is my light. At my...
As you have often heard me say, if you do not transform your pain, you will most assuredly transmit it. Healthy religion on the practical level tells us what to do with our pain—because we will have pain. We can’t avoid it; it’s part of life. If we’re not...