In this season of continued healing, I am soaking the powerful words of Julia Watts Belser deep into my own bones: “Disability has taught me much about the potent spiritual subversiveness of being radically comfortable in my own skin, of daring to find the presence of...
It's crazy how the presence of God can completely change your mood and attitude in an instant. One worship song, one whispered prayer, one Scripture verse can take you from the absolute worst mindset to a place of such peace and joy. There's nothing like the presence...
Restoration is the inworking of God's presence that transforms us with the heart of God, the mind of Christ, and the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Before doubt, I thought that faith was a matter of correct beliefs. My religious teachers taught me so: that if I didn’t hold the right beliefs, or at least say that I held them, I would be excommunicated from my community, and perhaps, after death, from God’s...
The Holy Spirit is the unrestricted presence of God in which our life wakes up, becomes wholly and entirely living, and is endowed with the energies of life.
Switching on the lectern light and clearing his throat, the preacher speaks both the word of tragedy and the word of comedy because they are both of them of the truth and because Jesus speaks them both, blessed be he. The preacher tells the truth by speaking of the...
The alligator--the chaos, the storm, the danger, the divorce, the illness, the crisis--and the human response--what you and I do in the midst of chaos--and the presence of God in chaos--these are profound issues of faith. And the stories about chaos and God and us are...
Because God is the subject of worship, we must back up a step to recall that, before liturgy can involve the work of the people who offer their praise, it begins with the presence of God graciously inviting that response. It seems to me that some of the worship wars...
In true love it is not we who love the afflicted in God; it is God in us who loves them. When we are in affliction, it is God in us who loves those who wish us well. Compassion and gratitude come down from God, and when they are exchanged in a glance, God is present...
A man must have a sense of being cared for, of not being alone and stranded in the universe. All of us want the assurance of not being deserted by life nor deserted in life. Faith teaches us that God is--that He is the fact of life from which all other things take...