To be homeless the way people like you and I are apt to be homeless is to have homes all over the place but not to be really at home in any of them. To be really at home is to be really at peace, and our lives are so intricately interwoven that there can be no real...
The community of Christ is called and equipped in baptism. In baptism we are taught to find our strength in God and God’s people rather than ourselves. We are prepared for the shock of moral transformation by a cleansing, cold bath. We are born, drowned, adopted,...
Shame seems most widespread and deepest among the very people who take rightness and goodness most seriously. It is a dimension of condemnation that reaches into the deepest levels of our souls. In shame we are self-condemned for being the person we are. It touches...
Worship is a gift, a gift from God that allows us to achieve our full potential as persons, and a gift to God that acknowledges God as Creator and Redeemer. Without gifts at its center, worship does not occur. God’s people gather for worship not so much to receive a...
And yet waiting is an essential part of the Christian life. …This is the mystery of our faith, that we are always waiting for Christ to come to us even though we believe that he has already come and that he is coming to us right now in word and sacrament. Is his...
We must not be led to believe that the Disciplines are only for spiritual giants and hence beyond our reach, or only for contemplatives who devote all their time to prayer and meditation. Far from it. God intends the Disciplines of the spiritual life to be for...
We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already totally in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. …To become aware of God’s presence in our lives, we have to...
Mature religion involves changing ourselves and letting ourselves be changed by a mysterious encounter with grace, mercy, and forgiveness. This is the truth that will set us free (John 8:32). Yet much of our history has involved trying to change other people--with our...
If singing “to God” or “to the Lord” could become our true focus, our passionate center—not the leadership style, the production and staging, or the music performance of our worship—what a difference it would make in our churches! Instead, our people often find...
Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, "How can we hide our wounds?" so we don't have to be embarrassed, but "How can we put our woundedness in the service of...