The root meaning of the word “martyr” is “witness.” The implication is that when people die for what they believe, they have said something important that we need to hear. In a strange way, believing that there are values greater than our own life and coming to terms...
Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and wrong…because sometime in your life you will have been all of these.
There are people who cannot enjoy simple pleasures, and that is why they seek drugs, alcohol, sexual misconduct, and many other things that destroy them, their bodies, their minds, and their families, and cause their children and grandchildren to suffer. If we educate...
And we are unhappy, uneasy, strained, oppressed, and fearful we shall be shallow. For over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we...
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors...
He descended into hell. That is very cheerful news… There is nothing I have known this side of hell that is unfamiliar to him. There is nothing known to me which I am wont to call hell which he has not already known. Nor is there anything beyond these realms which,...
Lent has begun, and we need to live in this dark place between the ashes and the bread and wine, between the declaration of our mortality and the declaration of Christ’s redeeming work. Lent is a time to reckon with the reality of the darkness. We do so with hope,...
As a political-religious metaphor, the kingdom of God referred to what life would be like on earth if God were king and the kingdoms of this world, the domination systems of this world, were not… The kingdom of God was not only for the earth, but involved a...
God by nature recruits outsiders to be partners in providence, makes a home among them, and through them enriches the world. We miss out on this fullness of life when we limit our partnerships to those who most resemble ourselves.
The devil is most happy when he can snatch from a servant of God true joy of the Spirit. He carries dust with him to throw into the smallest chinks of conscience and thus soil one’s mental candor and purity of life. But if joy of the Spirit fills the heart, the...