Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does
No one has ever done this before. No one has ever been you before. This exact interrelated web of people and events and places and memories and desire and love that is your life hasn't ever existed in...
As a pastor, you get invited into the most poignant moments of people's lives. Whether it's a wedding or a funeral or a hospital visit, you get invited into the center of the event, whether or not you...
It's all—let's use a very specific word here—miraculous. You, me, love, quarks, sex, chocolate, the speed of light—it's all miraculous, and it always has been.
The priest's work, the priest's service, was understood as an act of worship. This was God's desire at Sinai - that everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God...
God has to punish sinners, because God is holy, but Jesus has paid the price for our sin, and so we can have eternal life. However true or untrue that is technically or theologically, what it can do i...
The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God.
The priest's work, the priest's service, was understoon as an act of worship. Theis was Gods desire at Sinai - thst everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God...
The danger is that in reaction to abuses and distortions of an idea, we'll reject it completely. And in the process miss out on the good of it, the worth of it, the truth of it.
Suffering, it turns out, demands profound imagination. A new future has to be conjured up because the old future isn't there anymore.
When we deny the spiritual dimension to our existence, we end up living like animals. And when we deny the physical, sexual dimension to our existence, we end up living like angels. And both ways are...
What happens is our lives become so heavily oriented around the expectations of others that we become more and more like them and less and less like ourselves. We become split. I was split.I had this...
This story... blasts to pieces our biases and labels with a declaration that God is on everyone's side, extending grace and compassion to everyone, especially those we have most strongly decided are n...
The elements are all there—fingers, keys, strings, ears—but there’s something in the way, something inhibiting our ability to fully experience all the possibilities. The apostle Paul writes that now w...
It takes quite a spine to turn the other cheek. It takes phenomenal fortitude to love your enemy. It takes firm resolve to pray for those who persecute you. (with reference to Matthew 5)
We cannot earn what we have always had. What we can do is trust that what God keeps insisting is true about us is actually true.
The myth of redemptive violence - Caesar, peace, and victory - is in people's bones so deeply, we aren't even aware of it. You crush the opposition that's how we bring peace.
When you are bored, restless, longing for something more, unfulfilled, feeling like you've settled, haunted by the sense of being trapped in your own life, these are the deep waters of your soul speak...
He writes to his friends in Ephesus: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. When people ask you what the Bible is about, do you answer: It’s about becoming more enlightened? Because th...
God is in the best, and also the worst. God is in the presence, and also in the absence. God is in the power, and also in the powerlessness.
Showing 21 to 40 of 248 results