“Be still and know that I am God.” That is a challenge in this busy, busy holiday season. But at all times there is a reason that we are asked in Psalm 46:10 to still ourselves, to quiet our minds, to simplify our lives: we cannot access the divine wisdom within us, the “still, small […]

“The command to love God is first not simply because it’s most important but because it’s the only commandment. God is One; God is the only one; God is all. How we do anything is how we love God. How we love a neighbor, love a stranger, love an enemy, this is our love of […]

It seems to me that our goal in our Christian journey with Christ is to be converted from the world’s thinking to the way God thinks and to rest in his arms totally. We are so enmeshed in the world’s ways that we often don’t see that there is any difference, because we’ve been so […]

The choice between God and the world We can see it in everyone we know: the lack of self-knowledge and self-love. It’s evident in second-guessing oneself in everything. In not expressing who we are in the world, in not using our own voice to express ourselves. It’s evident in having to perform and not being […]

I love to read the pithy sayings on church signs around Charlotte. But I think the best one I have seen is at Grace UMC on Woodlawn Road that reads like this: “EGO stands for Edging God Out.” Our egos are the great challenge in the search for a deeper, truer relationship with God. We […]

“Fear of the Lord” is one of those phrases from the Bible that needs to be unpacked, to be thought about more broadly than is usually done. So often it has been tied to our behavior around the Ten Commandments and other rules of life in the Bible. It has been linked to our “bad” […]

“Make haste slowly” has been reverberating in my ears the last three days as I’ve been working on sample table runners for my son’s wedding. Each time I try to start a part of this project, I hear within me to slow down. To not rush. To be relaxed. This is not the way I […]

I think that there is some misunderstanding about what our role is in the relationship with God. Over time as we seek to draw closer to God we realize that we are not “doing” anything. God is leading us, God is transforming us, God is revealing us to ourselves. Our job is to more and […]

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 […]

Faith is not just a belief in God; it is a belief in God plus a relationship with God; it is belief plus faith plus a deep relationship with God, plus taking whatever action God inspires. Faith is an ever-growing commitment to put God first, to continually open oneself up to the Lord, to listen […]