When we begin to realize that God loves us with our weakness, with our vulnerability, with our failures, we can begin to accept them as an inevitable part of our human life. We can love others--with their failures--when we stop despising ourselves--because of our...
In returning to ourselves, in contemplating the compassion of Jesus and realizing that "This means me," we come under the Mercy and qualify for the nametag "blessed." In urging us to compassionate caring for others, Jesus invites us to have compassion for ourselves....
If one is honest about what Jesus says about loving others (including one's enemies) and about sharing one's possessions with others, one has to admit that Jesus wasn't very practical at all. Indeed, he was over-the-top radical. He was far more radical than I like or...
And so it comes down to this: the only way to truly overcome our fear of death is to live life in such a way that its meaning cannot be taken away by death. This sounds grandiose, but it is really very simple. It means fighting the impulse to live for ourselves,...
When we are able to trust the gospel that our human love of God and one another is the sum total of what we were put on earth to do, and that we have everything we need to be human, then redeeming things will continue to happen, both because and in spite of us.
Just up the road from my home is a field with two horses in it. From a distance, each looks like every other horse. But if you stop your car or are walking by, you will notice something quite amazing. Looking into the eyes of one horse will disclose that he is blind....
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were...
I personally know a family whose most meaningful Christmas truly embraced its spirit. [In 1986 this family thought of a needy family in their congregation that was struggling just to survive.] The parents and their two children discussed together how to help this...
Find out how much God has given you, and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others. The superfluities of the rich are the necessities of the poor. Those who retain what is superfluous possess the goods of others.
It is easier to love people in a theoretical sense while on a mission trip or in the spotlight or when you get fringe benefits and it makes you feel good. Love is, by definition, putting others before yourself. That means caring about what they care about—before,...