If prayer stands as the place where God and human beings meet, then I must learn about prayer. Most of my struggles in the Christian life circle around the same two themes: why God doesn't act the way...
When I pray for another person, I am praying for God to open my eyes so that I can see that person as God does, and then enter into the stream of love that God already directs toward that person.
When a doctoral student at Princeton asked, What is there left in the world for original dissertation research? Albert Einstein replied, Find out about prayer. Somebody must find out about prayer.
They [Old Testament] taught me about Life with God: not how it is supposed to work, but how it actually does work.
The gospel of grace begins and ends with forgiveness. And people write songs with titles like Amazing Grace for one reason: grace is the only force in the universe powerful enough to break the chains...
The first nation to separate Christianity from government produced perhaps the most religious nation on earth.
The church works best as a separate force, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm’s length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture a...
Sometimes the only meaning we can offer a suffering person is the assurance that their suffering, which has no apparent meaning for them, has a meaning for us.
Pleasure represents a great good but also a grave danger.
Playing off a short story by H. G. Wells, Simone Weil drew an analogy to a land of blind people in which scientists could devise a complete system of physics leaving out the concept of light. Weightle...
Jesus says in effect, 'Do you want to know what it feels like to be God? When one of those two-legged humans pays attention to me, it feels like I just reclaimed my most valuable possession, which I h...
In the presence of the Great Physician, my most appropriate contribution may be my wounds.
In God’s presence I feel small because I am small.
I know Christians who yearn for God's older style of a power-worker who topples pharaohs, flattens Jericho's walls, and scorches the priests of Baal. I do not. I believe the kingdom now advances throu...
I do not know if that theory is correct, but I do know that singling out one behavior as sin and emphasizing it over others provides a convenient way of dodging our own need for grace. High-minded mor...
I can worry myself into a state of spiritual ennui over questions like What good does it do to pray if God already knows everything? Jesus silences such questions: he prayed, so should we.
Humility is the real Christian virtue, says Nouwen. When we come to realize that . . . only God saves, then we are free to serve, then we can live truly humble lives.
Herein lies the most solemn challenge facing Christians who want to communicate their faith: if we do not live in a way that draws others to the faith rather than repels them, none of our words will m...
God is the ultimate judge of hypocrisy in the church, I decided; I would leave such judgment in God’s capable hands. I began to relax and grow softer, more forgiving of others. After all, who has a pe...
G. K. Chesterton once wrote, All men matter. You matter. I matter. It’s the hardest thing in theology to believe.