"Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will be with child ..." (Luke 1:30)
No matter how troubled Mary was, her heart had been cultivated by faith, and she responded to the news with composure, dignity, and faith. She...
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 MOREWe’re going to want our souls strong and ready for the days ahead, filled with God, not fried and empty. So we must practice soul care.
I’m not suggesting you go on a witch hunt for every neglected place in your soul. There’s way too much...
READ MOREI was thumbing through a Williams-Sonoma catalog. It calls itself "a catalog for cooks," but really, it's a catalog of the life we wish we had. Everything is beautiful, delicious, elegant. The kitchens portrayed are immaculate—there are no messes...
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 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 MOREThe Evil One lied to us about where true life was found...and we believed him.
God gave us the wondrous world as our playground, and he told us to enjoy it fully and freely. Yet despite his extravagant generosity, we had to reach for the...
READ MOREI was reading the prophet Jeremiah a few weeks ago when I ran across a passage that referred to God as "the Lord Almighty." To be honest, it didn't resonate. There's something too religious about the phrase; it sounds churchy, sanctimonious. The...
READ MOREIn the mythic story of The Lion King, the lion cub Simba is separated in his youth from his father through a murder engineered by his uncle, Scar, the character symbolizing the evil one in our story. Scar arranges for the cub to be...
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 MORESomething has crept into our assumptions about Jesus that makes it almost impossible to relate to him, not to mention love him. I say “crept” because it has not been a conscious decision; few of the things that shape our actual convictions are. I...
READ MORELove God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Jesus said this was the first and greatest commandment. So let’s keep this simple: Do you love God? It all starts there. Make a practice of loving God. “But how?” a...
READ MORERemember, when Jesus boiled his whole mission down to healing the brokenhearted and setting prisoners free from darkness, he was referring to all of us. Our modern, scientific, Enlightenment worldview has simply removed spiritual warfare...
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