I don’t believe in sin. Let me tell you why. First I had an overdose of hell-fire-and-damnation preaching in my childhood, so I am naturally—now—very skeptical about this kind of teaching.  But more than that, I have had a sea change in how I think about God and how God looks at us […]

         How we think of God directly influences how we relate to God. So much of what we think about God was formed in our early childhood years and rests within us unchanged for years hence. What is you concept of God? What is your default setting for God that you return to when […]

I am reading a book called Ignorance by a professor of neurobiology at Columbia University, Stuart Firestein, Ph.D. His thesis is that scientists do not go from one hypothesis to another, but rather they explore their own ignorance of how things work and then decide what the next thing they need to discover/research is. Science […]

Sitting at the bar on the deck at Joe’s Crab shack right on the beach in Jacksonville, Florida, twice last weekend, once for dinner of shrimp, shrimp and more shrimp and once for a glass of wine at sunset, I marveled at how wonderful it felt to have the wind blowing through my hair, the […]

Practice. Persistence. Dependency. Joy. Acrobats illustrate so well the life of the Spirit, the life lived in, with and for God. It takes tons of practice to make sure that all the elements are there to keep each one safe and that each acrobat is in the right place at the right time catching, releasing, […]

“For God so loved the world…” is the theme of the whole Bible. This truth is evident in the creation story, in the lives of Abraham and Sarah, in the Exodus, throughout the history of the Hebrews/Jews, in the life and teachings of Jesus, and in the Epistles. GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD. There is […]

This I know for sure about the rule/reign/kingdom of God: we are in it, under it—always. God is working in our lives—always. We are connected to God—always. Through God we are connected to all people and all life—always. God loves us—always. God forgives us–always. God welcomes us back—always. And we have little awareness of these […]

Think of a cosmic switchboard or a universal WiFi connection. Is this what the mind of God is like? I believe that all of creation is contained somehow in the mind of God. And within that mind travels all the information about our needs and desires and struggles and pain and created selves. God knows […]

In the 23rd Psalm the word “surely” rings out with confidence and love and expectation and God and me in life together! It is reassuring and definite and without qualifiers. It implies love and providence, needs and challenges met, and no doubt. Look at these synonyms for surely: Absolutely Beyond Doubt Definitely Inevitably Inexorably Infallibly […]

“I am the way and the truth and the life.”[1] It is Jesus’ life and what he modeled for us that interests me in this declaration from the Gospel of John.  I am thinking in terms of lifestyle, a more modern way of looking at it, but we have to go back to the early […]