Well, he created laughter. And think of the crowd he dined with. These rabble-rousers quickly earned Jesus a reputation as a drunkard and a glutton, and it wasn’t because they served water and crackers. This was a wild group, and surely such a...
READ MOREWhat does it mean to be defiantly joyful in this moment when I am dwelling on the ancient path of shame and disappointment in myself? Those paths are made of quicksand.
I need a Savior.
I have one.
My friend Lisa Beck...
READ MOREThe coronation of Jesus. Perhaps the most joyful, certainly the most triumphant moment in history, second only to the resurrection. For now the glorious kingdom will come, the eternal summer romp of men and angels. His crowning ensures the...
READ MOREOur Enemy is a thief, and of all the precious things he has stolen from our hearts, his worst act of treachery has been to steal our future from us. He has stolen all the magic and promise and wonder of the happily ever after. Very few of us live...
READ MOREThe heart is the connecting point, the meeting place between any two persons. The kind of deep soul intimacy we crave with God and with others can be experienced only from the heart. I know a man who took his daughter to dinner; she was surprised...
READ MOREThe more you give the parts of your life over to Jesus, the more his life is able to invade yours. The relief alone is worth the price.
Last night Stasi and I were at a dinner party with friends we love and enjoy. It was one of...
READ MOREThis is the power of addiction. Whatever the object of our addiction is, it attaches itself to our intense desire for eternal and intimate communion with God and each other in the midst of Paradise—the desire that Jesus himself placed in us...
READ MOREIt is a beautiful paradox that the more God’s we become, the more ourselves we become—the “self” he had in mind when he thought of you before the creation of the world. She’s in there; she might be badly bruised and covered with all sorts of muck...
READ MOREIt’s getting close to the new year as I write now. It’s as good a time as ever to look back, take stock, sit with Jesus, and ask where He’d like me to grow, to focus, or to challenge myself in this next season of my life. It’s good for us all to...
READ MOREBy the grace of God, we cannot quite pull it off. In the quiet moments of the day we sense a nagging within, a discontentment, a hunger for something else. But because we have not solved the riddle of our existence, we assume that something is...
READ MOREOur acts of remembering must therefore involve both essential truths and dramatic narrative. I believe we need to hold the creeds in one hand and our favorite forms of art in the other. There are films, books, poems, songs, and paintings I return...
READ MOREIf joy is a fruit of the Spirit (and it is), then we are meant to experience and enjoy it, regardless of our circumstances. Whatever may be swirling around us, the eye of the storm is joy. But how do we get there? The simple answer is we need to...
READ MOREThe incarnation is one of the greatest treasures of our faith. The world keeps pushing God away, feeling more comfortable with him up in the heavens somewhere. But in the coming of Jesus he draws near. Incredibly near. He takes on our humanity....
READ MOREWe value independence. Mobility. Self-sufficiency. Yay. But we are a dependent people. Dependent on air, food, water. Needful of others. Needful of God. He is our divine helper, our ezer, without whom we will not be able to live a life...
READ MOREAs we near the end of this year, we're all a little beat up. 2020 was a kind of shaking and spiritual "sifting." The world was shaken; we were all shaken and sifted, and it revealed where our hopes and security were actually placed.
And in...
READ MOREIn the end, it doesn't matter how well we have performed or what we have accomplished—a life without heart is not worth living. For out of this wellspring of our soul flow all true caring and all meaningful work, all real worship and all...
READ MOREWhen I consider all that is at stake in this journey I am on, how vulnerable are my heart and the hearts of those I love, I am moved to fall on my face and cry out to God for the grace to remember. George MacDonald says it better in poetry:
... READ MOREHere’s what I am learning: A grateful heart is a heart that is free. An ungrateful heart is a heart that is bound. Gratitude inevitably leads to freedom.
The root of the word gratitude is the Latin word gratis, which means free. If...
READ MOREEntering into the Sacred Romance begins with eyes to see and ears to hear. Where would we be today if Eve had looked at the serpent with different eyes, if she had seen at once that the beautiful creature with the charming voice and the...
READ MOREFlames are licking all around us, aren’t they? All the time. Saint Peter describes our life here on this earth as a “fiery ordeal” (1 Peter 4:12). Tragedies and heartache and pressures and illnesses and irritations grand and small show up...
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