It is a help to think of the life and death of Jesus as sacrifice, but the word needs to be used with care. In the world of religion a sacrifice is either an offering to the ultimately holy or the giving up of something in devotion to the holy. The two ideas can blend...
The Spirit was present at creation and abided in Jesus of Nazareth and in every other being who has ever lived and ever will. Because it is life itself, it infuses all life. It need not be asked into our lives, for it is already there. While this Spirit dwells in us,...
…until we are quiet and listen, we can never know what is really going on—even in ourselves. Especially in ourselves. Silence frightens us because it is silence that brings us face-to-face with ourselves. It tells us what we’re obsessing about. it reminds us of what...
Life, with its achievements and challenges, its joys and sorrows, gifts us with many opportunities to grow and serve. We serve when we willingly share the wisdom we have gleaned from our life experiences. The spirit of our life is made visible in the spirit of our...
Granted, a nation must have greatness of spirit and pioneers who will lead it toward new goals. Just as much, if not more so, however, a nation needs men and women of lifelong performance of duty, of clearheaded loyalty, of discipline of heart and body. A nation needs...
The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking...
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,...
As someone has put it, the biblical understanding of human beings is not that they have bodies, but that they are bodies… Those who believe in the immortality of the soul believe that life after death is as natural a human function as waking after sleep. The Bible...
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are, just as the glad and gracious things will, too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination, and regret that make us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become,...