1.9.23   A conversation over lunch with a friend one day reminded me that we never really get over ourselves totally even as we commit our lives to the Lord. As we offer ourselves and each sin we have committed, the challenges we have faced, and the hopes we have for ourselves and others up […]

During this coronavirus season let’s dig a little deeper into our lives beyond the mind’s ragings of anxiety and hopelessness and the powerful desire to get back to “normal,” which I have found to be  a moving target at best. Let’s take the time to enjoy our families and this beautiful earth, to look for […]

    In August of this year I heard Father Gregory Boyle speak in Charlotte about his work with gang members in East Los Angeles. For 35 years he has invited young men and women out of gangs into Homeboy and Homegirl Industries. He has written two books about his work, Tattoos on the Heart […]

  If we meet a person and judge their lives by what we see on the surface—how they dress or look, or what they have done, we are not loving him or her.  If we don’t get to know their story and why they are the way they are, then we are not open to […]

  I walked on air for three days after I gave my life to Christ, but came crashing down to earth when I heard these words: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me!”  I wrote pages and pages of things that I put before God in my life. I think that my whole journey […]

One of the least understood ways of dealing with the pain and suffering in our lives and in this world is to not resist the pain and suffering, to not resist what is already in our lives or someone elses. Everyone in this world suffers to a greater or lesser extent and nothing, not education […]

We yearn. Pant. Thirst. Long. Faint. Cry out. In the Psalms in Job and in Isaiah we cry out to the Lord with desire, with aching, with hunger. “I will see him with my own eyes.” [Job 19:25-27] “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” [Psalm 42:1-2] “I long to dwell in your […]

  If we want to know the purpose of the pain and suffering in our lives, we might look to the story of Job, who was a devout believer in God, also a wealthy man with a great family and property and friends. As the story goes, God boasted to Satan that Job was a […]

So much of Christian teaching is about the need for the forgiveness of sins, as if that constitutes the whole of Jesus’s teachings and actions during His ministry.[1] I am not saying that we don’t need forgiveness of sins; we need not only to own what we have done and said, but we need to […]

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”  If Jesus is known as the Prince of Peace [foretold in Isaiah 9:6], then to follow Him means we are at peace with all that He was and taught, that we are at peace with ourselves and with everyone else. There are […]