The second petition in the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:12, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” has two main interpretations in our churches today: 1) as I just quoted and 2)” forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There is another version of Jesus’ teaching in […]

  As often as we say the Lord’s Prayer, we repeat the line that says “Give us this day our daily bread.” Bread is a common reference in the Old and New Testaments from the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Exodus to Isaiah 30:20 “The Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water […]

We are born of God, in His image, into this world, into this country, where we are raised in its cultural standards and goals. Even if we are raised in the church, we are very much indoctrinated into the norms and standards of our culture through our parents, our friends, our schools. Here in the […]

Love and the Word leave a trail just like the flower petals of this crepe myrtle tree fall to earth. Hear what God says about how His word operates in the world: “my word goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the […]

If you ever wonder about the Indwelling Spirit of God and what He might be saying to you, the first thing to know is that His voice in our minds is usually the one we respond to this way, “Oh! No! I couldn’t do that!” as we dismiss what He whispers to us. So the […]

One of the gifts of the coronavirus has been to see clearly how my work and the circumstances of the day or week seem to complement each other. For the last eight years as I have written three books and kept up my blog along with a few clients in spiritual direction, I worked in […]

As I began to wake up one morning a few months ago, it was on my mind that the more I wished blessings on someone else, family or friends or even unknown others, the more I would be reaping blessings in my life.  This is a basic principle of the Bible by which our actions […]

It is such a simple idea: we human beings are all created in the image of God.[1] But it is the hardest thing we face as Christians—to let go of all our prejudices and cultural conditioning to see beyond the surface differences, to see Jesus in every person we meet. In Matthew 25, in the […]

To be born again is like snipping away, one by one, at the ties that bind us to the earth, to the world and all its priorities and solutions. It is like letting go of all that limits us. It is like being in a course that asks us to let go of everything we […]

“Please provide proof/evidence of your Sky Daddy,” went one of the comments on my blog post last week, entitled “Heaven Bound or Earth-bound.” From time to time I get unbelieving or even snide remarks in the comments to my blog posts, and mostly I don’t answer them. But I paid attention to this one, because […]