Earlier in my life I thought the things that mattered were the things that you could see, like your car, your house, your wealth, your property, your office. But as I’ve grown older I’ve become convinced that the things that matter most are the things that you can’t...
Giving frees us from the tyranny of money. But we do not just give money; we give the things money has purchased. In Acts the early Christian community gave houses and land to provide funds for those in need (Acts 4:32-37). Have you ever considered selling a car or a...
A young couple moved into a new house. The next morning while they were eating breakfast, the young woman saw her neighbor hanging the washing outside. "That laundry is not very clean; she doesn’t know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better detergent.” Her...
We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough, and we'll be more content when they are. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will...
A man was shipwrecked on an island where no one else lived. He laboriously gathered some material from the island and built himself a crude house. One day he was away from the house when he saw smoke rising from that direction. He rounded a bend and, to his horror,...
Doubt is like a front porch. All of us go through it before we get into the house of faith.
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
Most of our conflicts and difficulties come from trying to deal with the spiritual and practical aspects of our life separately instead of realizing them as parts of one whole. If our practical life is centered on our own interests, cluttered up by possessions,...
We modernists have often gotten at our faith by a negative process. We do not believe this. We do not believe that. We have given up this incredible idea or that obsolete doctrine. So we pare down and dim out our faith by negative abstractions until we have left only...
I am maybe the ultimate Protestant, the man at the end of the Protestant road, for, as I have read in the Gospels over the years, the belief has grown in me that Christ did not come to found an organized religion, but came instead to found an unorganized one. He seems...