This day reminds us of the worst and the best we see when we look in the mirror. On the one hand we see the selfishness, the fear the avarice and the cowardice that made Calvary inevitable. On the other hand, we see the selflessness, the confidence, the grace and the...
Lent is a time of hunger—hunger for truth-telling and a genuine repentance that flows from such truth-telling; and hunger for forgiveness from One who knows the truth about us but who nevertheless comes to us with the offer of amazing grace. from Journal for...
Everyone is flailing through this life without an owner’s manual, with whatever modicum of grace and good humor we can manage.
Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophize and preachers preach and laborers sweat. But in that silent baby, lying in that humble...
There is always an enormous temptation in all of life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end. It is so self-conscious, so apparently moral, simply to step aside from the gaps where the creeks and winds pour down,...
We are neither big nor small but what we are in the eyes of God, and as long as we surrender ourselves totally then God can use us. The emptier we are, the more room we give God to fill us. Even God cannot put anything into what is already full. By ourselves we may be...
The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever...
It was amazing. I do not at all understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt. I gobbled it, licked it, held...
Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of meaningless and empty life… It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as...
Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus...