We would call him a wastrel or spendthrift or a lazy man or squanderer, but Jesus called him the lost[NIV] or prodigal[NRSV or MSG] son in His parable. In some ways we all feel like that lost son(or daughter) who has “spent” our inheritance from God in bad ways; we are undeserving of God’s love […]

Christianity is a lay-driven movement, not a preacher-driven one. Each of us is to have a personal relationship with Christ, a deep knowledge of the Bible gained through Bible study, an ability to hear and follow God’s Indwelling Spirit, a body of experience of who God is in our own lives, knowledge of our own […]

  “Lent leads us to the cross,” preached Rev. John Cleghorn at our church on the first Sunday in Lent. The question for us is this: is it the cross of Jesus or our own cross that Lent leads us to? Of course, the whole passion story leads us to Jesus’ death on the cross […]

If English had a better neutral pronoun, I would use it instead of “he” for God. As it is, neither pronoun, “he” or “it,” begins to describe who God is or what God is about. God the Father is such a common image that we have of God—it speaks to the relationship that God wants […]

By the time we are teenagers we have grown shells like turtles– a hard, outer shell which surrounds our truer selves, protecting what is true and real within us. The shell consists of our cultural conditioning and our own self-image as well as our ego and everything human about us. We may think that all […]

Do you know how you think? Do you listen you to the negative tape in your head? Do you know the source of its injunctions, its fears? Are you comfortable with all that you are, warts and all? Or do you push away the thoughts? Will you do anything to drown them out? What is […]

I have a strict definition of gossip that has come to me over the years: any time I am telling someone else’s story, I am gossiping. I am using another person’s story for my own purposes. Instead what I, what we should be doing is telling our own tales, being honest about who we are. […]

Humility is probably the most important quality that is realized in a close relationship with God. In surrendering our own agendas, our preferences, our cultural biases, our assumptions and our ways to God, we are left with our own poverty, our own lack of knowledge of God, our own small selves. Walking with the Lord […]

  The most inspiring church I have ever seen is the cathedral at Tintern Abbey in Western England near Wales.  A ruin since the 16th C., with no roof or windows or doors, and grass growing where the pews once sat, it remains the perfect church to me, a two-story tall one with walls totally […]

We could call the ancient Israelites rebellious—that was certainly their nature in the wilderness of the Exodus story. Every single time they couldn’t find the water they wanted or the food they needed, every single time they were afraid, i.e. when Moses stayed 40 days up on Mt. Sinai with God, every time things didn’t […]