The basic act of love for God is gratitude and praise to Him for all we have been given. And we can start today with tremendous gratitude for the gift of the Christ Child who was born in our world long ago and who continues to be born in us and to lead us […]
There are, of course, many ways to pray, and many emotional states to pray from. We can pray in anxiety or in desperation even or in a relaxed state, at peace. I am sure that God doesn’t care about our emotional state when we pray, but I am convinced that He cares about whether we […]
There are, of course, many ways to pray, and many emotional states to pray from. We can pray in anxiety or in desperation even or in a relaxed state, at peace. I am sure that God doesn’t care about our emotional state when we pray, but I am convinced that He cares about whether we […]
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 […]
Years ago as I was still struggling to understand and to let go the hell-fire-and-damnation god of my childhood, I was led to read a number of the writings of the saints of the church from Julian of Norwich to John of the Cross to Catherine of Siena, but my real favorite was Teresa of […]
We know what prayer is, right? The Lord’s Prayer. Petitions. The prayer is in the words that we send up to God. Those are prayers, wonderful ones, yes, but only a small part of praying. Praying mostly consists of opening ourselves up—heart, mind, soul and body—to the presence of God. We can access his […]
Sometimes it seems so simple: we surrender our lives to Christ and then….everything is good. But the reality is different, with that first surrender we are just making the first steps on a journey that takes us from extreme attachment to the world’s ways to connecting deeply to God’s ways. And it is not an […]
If we believe the Gospels, so much of what we pray for has been already given to us; still we continue to pray for God’s promised love and forgiveness. Why do we do that? Do we not trust the record that God has left for us? Here are a few examples of his promises to […]
As I have pondered the Beatitudes[Matthew 5:3-12] and read diverse opinions about them, I remember most what I read about Jim Forest’s concept in The Ladder of the Beatitudes,” a step-by-step process which describes the journey with Christ. Each rung is dependent on us achieving the current step before we can continue. We can think […]
Sometimes it’s a call from God. Or maybe you are embarrassed by what you’ve said or done and know that it was not said or done from love. It may come from an accumulation of evidence that something is wrong in your body or heart or mind. At one time for me it was a […]