My hope is to interpret the life and example of Jesus in a redemptive and relevant way. Each generation must do this with Jesus, lest it be forced into stale beliefs that strain credibility and diminish life. For the joy of Christian faith is not to be found in the...
Jesus returns again and again to his Church with his message and the power of his Spirit…to arouse a Church which, tired and listless, is always on the point of sleep; to light the way for a Church which is so often on the point of losing the path on its pilgrimage;...
A church must not overlook the fact that it exists for unselfish, active service to society, to individuals and groups and even to its opponents. If it does so, it loses its dignity, its claim and the reason for its existence, since it abandons discipleship. But if a...
Moses said to God, “Who am I to go to Pharoah and bring the people of Israel out of Egypt? (Exodus 3:11). The Lord answers, “I shall be with you.” That’s all. Simply, I’ll be with you! He wouldn’t tell Moses how to do it. He doesn’t give him a timetable, any...
It dawned on me that even my best theological and spiritual formation had not been able to completely free me from a Father God who remained somewhat threatening and somewhat fearsome. All I had learned about the Father’s love had not fully enabled me to let go of an...
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least...
A story from the Buddhist tradition, probably timeless but in its most recent versions set during the Chinese Communist invasion of Tibet, makes this point very clear. A soldier bursts into a monastery cell and thrusts his rifle into the belly of a meditating monk....
People view hospitality as quaint and tame partly because they do not understand the power of recognition. When a person who is not valued by society is received by a socially respected person or group as a human being with dignity and worth, small transformations...
The wonderful thing about praying is that you leave a world of not being able to do something, and enter God’s realm where everything is possible. He specializes in the impossible. Nothing is too great for his almighty power. Nothing is too small for his love....
The second half of life presents a rich possibility for spiritual enlargement, for we are never going to have greater powers of choice, never have more lessons of history from which to learn, and never possess more emotional resilience, more insight into what works...