We cannot serve two masters and more…

Aug 14, 2017

There’s a curious synchronicity in two of Jesus’ sayings. The first is that “no one can serve two masters.” [Matthew 6:24]. The second saying is this: “Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it.” [Luke 17:33]. In thinking about the first one about serving God and […]

Rethinking Suffering

Aug 07, 2017

Pain and suffering are greatly misunderstood in this world.  It is part of our existence, in both the plant and animal kingdoms, that things can happen that maim or hurt or try us, that can cause us great suffering, illness and even death. We choose to see the pain as unnecessary, as totally preventable; so […]

Growth Process of the Soul

Jul 31, 2017

I can have all the right beliefs; I can do all the right things as dictated by my church, but if I don’t know what God is saying to me in this moment and the next, I am nowhere in my faith. If I don’t allow God in to teach me directly what He wants […]

Prayer

Jul 24, 2017

The word prayer hardly describes all that communion with and in God means. Prayer is being in God’s presence, any time, any place with or without words. The words communion and togetherness best describe the state of living in and with God. Prayer is a state of being with, in communion with our deepest selves […]

Talents, Lessons Learned, Gifts

Jul 17, 2017

There are three aspects of ourselves that we bring to serving God: our talents, the lessons we have learned from the pain and suffering we’ve endured here on earth and the spiritual gifts that we have been given. Our talents and strengths, like abilities for organizing or teaching or leading or managing or creating or […]

Servants of God

Jul 10, 2017

Following all the heroes of the Old and New Testaments we aspire to be servants of God. From Abraham to Moses, from David to Isaiah, from Mary to John the Baptist, from Peter to Paul, we have prime examples of those men and women who heard the voice of God and followed it as best […]

“Be Strong and Courageous”

Jul 03, 2017

  This spring I’ve been reading a number of biographies and autobiographies of Christian men and women  mostly from the mid-nineteenth to the later twentieth centuries; they have taught me a lot about what it means to depend only on God in every circumstance. From John G. Paton, a Scottish missionary, who stood up to […]

Where am I blind and deaf to God?

Jun 26, 2017

Jesus’s message in the Gospels is a radical shift from our normal human interactions. We are used to living in partialities, like believing in God and then living our lives as we want. Or praying that God intervene in our lives, but only in the way we want it done.  Or we want to hold […]

Humility

Jun 19, 2017

Writing about gratitude last week leads me now to humility, the true reduction of our ego-importance to the reality of who we are before God. When we think that human beings are but one of an estimated 7 million species on this earth, and that this earth is but one planet in a vast universe […]

Living the 100th Psalm

Jun 12, 2017

  “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” Psalm 100 is short and to the point: be joyful; know the Lord; we are his people; thank and praise him; bless his name. Celebrate our God and be grateful. We are his people; […]