Every woman can tell you about her wound; some came with violence, others came with neglect. Just as every little boy is asking one question, every little girl is, as well. But her question isn’t so much about her strength. No, the deep cry of a...
READ MOREI am haunted by the stories of people who make the summit of Everest. Such incredible devotion is required, such total focus of body, soul, and spirit. Reaching the top of the world's tallest mountain becomes for those who try the central driving...
READ MOREJesus’ manner can be appreciated only in light of a deeper river flowing in him, this fierce intentionality. Otherwise, you get those popular and ridiculous portraits of Jesus as the wandering storyteller, no more controversial or dangerous than...
READ MOREI have in my files a copy of a letter written by Major Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer in the 2nd Rhode Island Infantry Regiment. He writes to his wife on the eve of the Battle of Bull Run, a battle he senses will be his last. He speaks tenderly...
READ MOREWe live in a larger story. This is not the land of the white picket fences with a chicken in every pot. We don’t live in Oz or the Kansas of its wizard. There is an incredibly good ending to our story, but it often isn’t on this side of eternity...
READ MORETo make room for God to fill the vessel of our soul, we have to begin moving out some of the unnecessary clutter that continually accumulates there like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Everybody has a junk drawer, that black hole for car keys,...
READ MOREWhen God comes to call Jeremiah to be his prophet of hard sayings to Judah, Jeremiah protests, saying, "'Ah, Sovereign LORD ... I do not know how to speak; I am only a child.' But the LORD said to me, 'Do not say, "I am only a child." You must go...
READ MOREThis motive—reverence for God—is a slippery one. This lets in a great deal of the clutter that gets between us and God, because it seems like the proper thing to do.
“Papa, I come to you this morning” has a totally different feel than “...
READ MOREBeauty is transcendent. It is our most immediate experience of the eternal. Think of what it's like to behold a gorgeous sunset or the ocean at dawn. Remember the ending of a great story. We yearn to linger, to experience it all our days...
READ MORETo wait is to learn the spiritual grace of detachment, the freedom of desire. Not the absence of desire, but desire at rest. St. John of the Cross lamented that “the desires weary and fatigue the soul; for they are like restless...
READ MORENow the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees...
READ MORELately, the surge is toward “justice Christianity”—intervening to prevent human trafficking or slavery, caring for indigenous cultures or for the planet itself. And it is right and it is wrong. My goodness, yes, of course God cares about justice...
READ MOREIn order to recognize a lie, we need to know the truth. Experts in counterfeit money don’t spend their time studying counterfeits. They study the real currency. In the same way, to engage in the spiritual battle raging around us, we don’t shift...
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