As we mark ourselves with these ashes, we remind ourselves that no grief is solitary; that what has stricken you is also carried by me. We begin our Lenten journey together, reminding one another that we are those whose flesh grows back. We are those who remain. It is...
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment or the smallest act of caring, all which have the potential to turn a life around.
By simply gathering on the Lord's day, as Christians have done from the first days, by forming a genuine community not just in word but in deed, the assembly bucks the trend of society. In doing so we are allowing ourselves to be shaped by God, and thereby place...
Engineering involves more than telling materials what they must do. If the engineer does not honor the nature of the steel of the wood or the stone, his failure will go well beyond aesthetics: the bridge or the building will collapse and put human life in peril. The...
Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophize and preachers preach and laborers sweat. But in that silent baby, lying in that humble...
The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. “Faking...
Imago dei, the image of God… We resemble God in our capacity to love, to reason, to feel, to relate to other creatures, to imagine, to plan, to create, to contemplate, and in many other ways. We are an image of God. A scratched-up one, badly damaged by sin, but the...
Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubt in God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice;...
I am convinced that a community-called-beloved is possible. This is an admittedly fragile possibility, but it is not a utopian dream. I believe that people of good will harbor a persistent hope that our planet can be a place of belonging for all its inhabitants. To...
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...