All the persons of faith I know are sinners, doubters, uneven performers. We are secure not because we are sure of ourselves but because we trust that God is sure of us.
00442 – God is Sure of Us
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00438 – Faith Takes Us to the Unknown
The stranger is also a central figure in biblical stories of faith, and for good reason. The religious quest, the spiritual pilgrimage, is always taking us into new lands where we are strange to others and they are strange to us. Faith is a venture into the unknown,...
00289 – Dying of Self and World
This internal dying or death has two closely related dimensions of meaning. On the one hand, it is a dying of the self as the center of its own concern. On the other hand, it is a dying to the world as the center of security and identity. These—the self and the...
00275 – Shalom!
The Hebrew term “shalom” is roughly translated in English as “peace.” But it can also mean salvation and liberation, safety and security, wholeness and completeness. Shalom happens when every relationship within the created order is set right, whether the scale be...
00263 – Relationship in the Present
The only real security in a relationship lies neither in looking back in nostalgia, nor forward in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.
00257 – Family? Or God’s Kingdom?
The context for much of what Jesus said about the family was his vision of the coming crisis of God’s reign which would turn ordinary life on its head. He perceived the coming of the kingdom to be a revolutionary event; the family could no longer provide true security...
00019 – Discovering Our Calling
We are never at home with ourselves until we have come to be what we know ourselves to be inside. And what we are inside, we are born with and meant to unleash. But all too often—for social approval or fear of risk or neurotic self-doubt or quick gain—we have learned...
00011 – Identifying with the Majority
Success, recognition, and conformity are the bywords of the modern world where everyone seems to crave the anesthetizing security of being identified with the majority.