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....
We do in fact say things like, “Oh, that kind of music, that kind of preaching, that kind of ceremony, isn’t pleasing to God.” Now, I don’t want to sound disrespectful, but I’m not yet convinced that those of our number who argue this way have really heard a word from...
To say that we believe that God loves the poor, judges in their behalf, wills their deliverance but do nothing ourselves to free the poor, to hear their pleas, to lift their burdens, to act in their behalf is an empty faith indeed. To say that God is love and not...
…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...
The awareness that we are yet meant to do more than we are signals where God lies in wait for us to become what we are meant to be. Then the spiritual life, the awareness of a driving energy within that is greater than ourselves, greater than anything around us,...
In the end, forgiveness is a form of divine healing. As we embrace divine forgiveness in our lives, our memories and our actions—our lives—are transformed and made whole. To forgive is not only to affirm our value as God’s beloved children but also to recognize that...
Each of us is called to prophetic agony—to speak the Word, to do justice and righteousness. We are most truly ourselves when we live within God’s insecurity, acknowledging Yahweh’s sovereignty over creation, taking full responsibility as contingent creatures who yet...
Being born-again is a new life, not of perfection but of striving, stretching, and searching—a life of intimacy with God through the Holy Spirit. There must first be an emptying and then refilling. To the extent that we want to know, understand and experience God, we...
It’s strange. We think of ourselves as needing him but we don’t think of Jesus as needing us. Yet we believe he sacrificed himself for us while we give little thought to the fact that real communion requires us to also sacrifice ourselves for him… Usually it is a...