Perhaps our worship of God in the shadow of the glory of the past occurs because we fasten our attention on heroes of the faith of bygone days. The giants of yesteryear grow bigger each day with the food of our imagination until their size is tremendous. To be sure,...
I am afraid that in our day we are too often prone to think that God is only worshiped in the “Wow” moments, and then we begin to feel pressure as musician-ministers to “produce” those moments. We confuse inspiration and worse yet, cheap thrill with Spirit power. It...
To wait with openness and trust is an enormously radical attitude toward life. It is choosing to hope that something is happening for us that is far beyond our own imaginings. It is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life. It is living with...
Such are the two great realities of Psalm 130: suffering is real, God is real. Suffering is a mark of our existential authenticity; God is proof of our essential and external humanity. We accept suffering; we believe in God. …But there is more than a description of...
The Christian’s waiting and hoping is based on the conviction that God is actively involved in his creation and vigorously at work in redemption. Waiting does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident...
Plenty of people write to me in the hope of getting some spectacular work to do, and at the same time they fail to see the worthwhileness of the immediate duty God has given them.
It is too small a thing to redeem only a few. God wants us all. This good news deserves our full acceptance. Thomas Merton wrote, “A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found; for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough...
In most worship services, some form of music accompanies the passing of offering plates. Financial gifts are offered to God in a context of music. Unfortunately, a tendency exists to interpret the instrumental or choral offertory as background music or a nice cover-up...
Our sense of urgency is balanced by the requirement to wait—to wait on the timing of God, which we can neither predict nor force. And the poor of the world have much to teach us about waiting—waiting with hope, purpose, and active preparation for change; waiting...
Waiting itself becomes prayer as we give our waiting to God. In waiting we begin to get in touch with the rhythms of life—stillness and action, listening and decision. They are the rhythms of God. It is in the everyday and the commonplace that we learn patience,...