The basic act of love for God is gratitude and praise to Him for all we have been given. And we can start today with tremendous gratitude for the gift of the Christ Child who was born in our world long ago and who continues to be born in us and to lead us […]

Words cannot describe God. They are merely common symbols, something that we can agree on, but which never convey His true nature, His beauty, creation, love, forgiveness, mercy and mystery. The word God stands in for the mystery of His love and forgiveness, a Father to us all who just loves those He created. It […]

What is it like to be a branch on the vine? To have God prune the dead wood off of you? To encourage your growth? To have things happen to you that scar your branch and yet you are still a part of the vine? What is it like to be dependent on the vine […]

Don’t wait until you die to live in the kingdom of God! Jesus spoke of the kingdom in the present tense: it “is at hand,” [Matthew 3:2 KJV] or “has come near you,” [Matthew 3:2 NIV] “is within you,” [Luke 17:21 KJV] or “is in your midst,” [Luke 17:21 NIV] or “is already among you.”[Luke […]

Two snakes: one in Genesis 3 and one in Numbers 21. Since I’ve spent the last few years knee-deep in the Exodus story, I finally made the connection between these slithery creatures the other day. Aha! I thought, these two snakes are connected. The first snake, the one in Genesis, represents Satan or the Devil […]

Over the last five years I have noticed that I have been through three transitions. The first occurred after I had moved from Charlotte to Baltimore and back within 9 months-time. At first I lived in an apartment for six months and then bought a townhome—three moves in two years. For at least a year […]

    The last several weeks I’ve been focusing on what it means to love God with all of ourselves as Jesus commanded. This week I want to add one more way in which we can love God with all of ourselves. When we give our whole selves to God in love, we are giving […]

There really is only one sin—separation from God. Every other thing that we label sin is merely a manifestation of the state of being separate from God. If we were living in God, with God or in Christ’s mind, how could we hurt someone else, reject another human being, judge someone else? Or do anything […]

It’s so complicated to follow all of Jesus’ teachings, to keep them all in mind, from the Sermon on the Mount to the parables and other sayings, but I am convinced that if we are obedient to His First Great Commandment and to the first four of the Ten Commandments, we cannot do anything that […]

The spiritual journey has been described classically in four stages: awakening, purgation, illumination and union. Awakening is the first movement in the journey into God’s world. It can be a direct answer to God’s call to be born again, to surrender your life to him. Or we can be thrown out of our normal life […]