"To live without risk is to risk not living," my paternal grandmother used to say. The way of trust is risky business, no doubt about it. To change careers suddenly because one feels fulfilled, to assume the energy-depleting care of elderly parents, to retreat for...
Faith is far more than the sum total of beliefs. Beliefs are merely pointers; faith is profound trust in the actuality to which beliefs point. The Creed mentions beliefs, but it is a statement of faith, not of beliefs. There are many beliefs, but there is ultimately...
I feel certain that God was there in lower Manhattan on 9/11, with every soul, in the midst of that sheer terror and raw evil. This gives me comfort. If the thought of finding God in such horrendous circumstances seems strange, perhaps it is because we are out of...
One of the essential paradoxes of Advent: that while we wait for God, we are with God all along, that while we need to be reassured of God's arrival, or the arrival of our homecoming, we are already at home. While we wait, we have to trust, to have faith, but it is...
As you have often heard me say, if you do not transform your pain, you will most assuredly transmit it. Healthy religion on the practical level tells us what to do with our pain—because we will have pain. We can’t avoid it; it’s part of life. If we’re not...
When we are able to trust the gospel that our human love of God and one another is the sum total of what we were put on earth to do, and that we have everything we need to be human, then redeeming things will continue to happen, both because and in spite of us.
God can and does impart greater gifts to those who are faithful while those who distrust him can only lose what they have. in The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. 8
Serenity Prayer God grant me the serenityto accept the things I cannot change;courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference.Living one day at a time;Enjoying one moment at a time;Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;Taking, as Jesus did,...
It is my experience that in modern times the care of children, particularly those in crisis, has been abandoned by the pastor. My concern for ministry to children has been growing for a long time. My first experience in clinical pastoral education was at a children’s...
Who, then, is the ultimately guilty one in this fiasco of the cross? Have we, even now, glimpsed the full dimensions of the crisis hanging over human history? …Clearly, as he hangs alone in desolation on the cross, and then is buried in the cold, malodorous...