It's interesting to watch what happens when a child walks into a room. Does your face light up? When my children used to walk in the room when they were little, I looked at them to see if they had buckled their trousers or if their hair was combed or if their socks...
I look around and see so much fear, people getting more and more comfortable with their hate, more at ease being mean, more united in their division. And I think, NO. Not me. I will not get lost in this fearful world. I will not play with bullies. I will continue to...
To call for two styles and to find impetus for the wintry sort of search demands boldness. It receives so little attention that anyone who defends it may well express the old reformers' anxiety: Am I alone right, and is the whole church wrong? Why in our era does the...
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 Church confesses her timidity, her evasiveness, her dangerous concessions. ..She was silent when she should have cried out...she failed to speak the right word in the right way at the right time.
He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey him,...
We don’t have to believe that God is the author of death and destruction in order to believe that God can speak to us, even in sorrow. God’s answer is not an explanation, but the promise of his presence through every storm of life. —————-Gender-neutral version: We...
Prayer is first and foremost the active presence of the Holy Spirit in our personal and communal lives. Through the disciplines of solitude and community we try to remove—slowly, gently, yet persistently—the many obstacles which prevent us from listening to God’s...
There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.
A Christian is: a mind through which Christ thinks, a heart through which Christ loves, a voice through which Christ speaks, and a hand through which Christ helps.