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.
The idea of “sacred space” is important [for worship]. The word “sanctuary” implies safety, shelter, and protection. A worship space communicates an otherness, but also a haven where individuals can come into acceptance, reflection, and space. A congregation is in...
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...
I said to my soul, be still and let the dark come upon you Which shall be the darkness of God… I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith...
Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.
God will continue clipping until so-called Christians repent of racism and bigotry; until Skid Rows are replaced by avenues of compassion and streets of hope; until child neglect is replaced by child nurture; until murder, abuse, and rape yield to mutual respect… God...
To believe in Christ’s rising and death’s dying is also to live with the power and the challenge to rise up now from all our dark graves of suffering love. If sympathy for the world’s wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, if love for those around us is not expanded,...
Faith becomes the one wholly inflexible ground for resistance to violence, precisely because it teaches us how to face death—not in excited expectation of reward, but in the sober letting-go of our fantasies in the sure hope that a faithful God holds us firmly in life...
The story of Jesus enables me to envision God as One who genuinely cares for each and all of us. In Jesus, God confronts the Darkness face to face, Incarnate, for our sake. Jesus is Light to the gentle face of God. The story of Jesus says that God laughs with us in...