In my present season of grief and regret, I am finding that there is no way through apart from gratitude, and that, in fact, thankfulness is my greatest help. Not a plaster of it applied on the wound, not some anesthetic thanks to numb or replace the sadness, but...
The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so...
I rest this day in God. I put in a single place all the pieces of my erring ways, the urgent thoughts both good and bad, together with my rights and wrongs. All in a single place they go. Here they lie where all is loss and all is gain, for they are mine. As for me--I...
This is the beginning of a new day. God has given me this day to use as I will. I can waste it or use it for good. What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it. When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something...
The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt.
If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you...
I’ve come to see that the call of God, the love that bids us welcome, is always a call to become the true you. Not a doormat. The true you. Not an imitation of someone else. The true you: someone made in the image of God, deserving of and receiving love. The ability...
It is clear that the myth of the Chosen Nation has been a powerful theme in American life. It is also clear that this myth can serve good and constructive purposes, especially when yoked to the notion of national covenant, for "covenant" implies responsibilities to...
With the mistaken view of God as a Punisher-in-Chief that most Christians seem to hold, we think our own violence is necessary and even good. But there is no such thing as redemptive violence. Violence doesn’t save; it only destroys all parties in both the short and...
If God doesn't give up on us, we had better not despair of ourselves. We can always do better--especially if we remember the opposite of despair is not optimism but hope. Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts. But...