God has not promised skies always blue, flower-strewn pathways all our lives through.God has not promised sun without rain, joy without sorrow, peace without pain.But God has promised strength for the day, rest for the labor, light for the way;Grace for the trials,...
Every once in a while, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and reject it. There are many reasons she may do this. If the lamb is returned to the ewe, the mother may even kick the poor animal away. Once a ewe rejects one of her lambs, she will never change her mind. These...
Twenty-five years ago one of my mentors told me that the truth that I was loved all the way through was the “brute fact of the universe.” I am now just beginning to believe it. Christianity is a love affair beginning with the gasp of astonishment with which all love...
Let us not tire of preaching love. It is the force that will overcome the world.Let us not tire of preaching love.Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out; it is the only thing that can.
The age of the coming Kingdom of God is the age of love, which requires us to accept each other unconditionally. Such love, which does not answer back and never says no, ensnares evil in the world (Matthew 5:39-40; Luke 6:29). It smashes the vicious circle of violence...
We keep doing these things over and over again on Sunday morning because we know that if we didn’t we might lose our love. In fact, those times when we don’t feel like it, when we really feel no deep attachment or desire to worship the Beloved, are the times we ought...
The bedrock of my faith—mind you, I didn’t get to it easily—is that we are loved by God. He loves us as we are, but too much to leave us that way. We are loved by God, and that’s what gives us value. We don’t achieve value. It’s not because we have value that we’re...
Jay hugged me hard when I left. He was going back to Colorado in a few days. “I don’t believe in God,” he said. “But sometimes when I’m up in the mountains above the tree line, it’s like whoa, you know: There’s a big, big love.” “I know,” I said. Christianity wasn’t...
“I mean,” I’d told Steve once, exasperated after listening to Donald talk about institutional growth and how to attract new members with our innovative liturgy, “the point of church isn’t to get people to come to church.” “No?” said Steve, cocking an eyebrow. “What is...
Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen…