We're so used to events being portrayed in particular ways that when they actually happen to us, and our life bears no resemblance to expectation, we don't really know how we're supposed to respond. Our lives are unrecognizable to us. Should we still...
Animals hold us to what is present: to who we are at the time, not who we’ve been or how are bank accounts describe us. What’s obvious to an animal is not the embellishment that fattens our emotional resumes but what’s bedrock and current in us...
God’s forgiveness doesn’t come cheaply, nor is it a ticket to do what we jolly well please because there’s a get out of jail free card at the end. Instead, it is the life-changing embrace of love that welcomes us when we’ve no reason to expec...
Many of us have been burned by love and vowed to keep ourselves safe and not get pulled in again. But, inevitably, we do. Then we vow that this time, it's going to be different. This time, we're not going to make the same mistakes. And things seem wo...
A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a "true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the ...
Heavenly Father, Thank you for taking us into the wilderness time and time again, for there we see revealed the secret sins of our souls. In the desert we experience your great power to save us from our unruly and sinful hearts, and there we complain...
The book that simply demands to be read, for no good reason, is asking us to change our lives by putting aside what we usually think of as good reasons. It's asking us to stop calculating. It's asking us to do something for the plain old delight and ...
In the doctrine of the Trinity,” wrote Herman Bavinck, “beats the heart of the whole revelation of God for the redemption of humanity.” As the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, “our God is above us, before us, and within us.” The doctrine of...
If words had cost money, Tom couldn't have used them more sparingly. The adjectives were purely descriptive, relating to form and colour, and were used to present the objects under consideration, not the young explorer's emotions. Yet through this au...
One of the difficulties of thinking clearly about anything is that it is almost impossible not to form our ideas in words which have some previous association for us; with the result that our thought is already shaped along certain lines before we ha...
THAT'S WHAT POWERFUL MEN DO TO THIS COUNTRY - IT'S A BEAUTIFUL, SEXY, BREATHLESS COUNTRY, AND POWERFUL MEN USE IT TO TREAT THEMSELVES TO A THRILL! THEY SAY THEY LOVE IT BUT THEY DON'T MEAN IT. THEY SAY THINGS TO MAKE THEMSELVES APPEAR GOOD - THEY MAK...
Jesus designed the Lord's prayer to reveal His desire to give us more fully, graciously, and suitably the very things we most want but seek elsewhere. He does not want to deny us our desires but helps remove the false objects of our affections so tha...
There's an apt expression: 'If you don't live in your body, where are you going to live?' But many of us don't. We tend to get locked into our heads or our imaginations . . . recognizing the importance of the body is primary. It's who we are, it's wh...
All terrible things are more terrible if they give us no chance of retrieving a blunder—either no chance at all, or only one that depends on our enemies and not ourselves. Those things are also worse which we cannot, or cannot easily, help. Speakin...
Shit!"Holly said when our eyes fell on her bra lying at our feet. I snatched it from the ground, trying to stuff it in my pocket, but Dad was already inside the room, looking us over carefully, eyes scanning us head to toe, pausing at the bra danglin...
In order to take control of our lives and accomplish something of lasting value, sooner or later we need to learn to believe. We don't need to shift our responsibilities onto the shoulders of some deified spiritual superman or sit around and wait for...
I had the feeling she was going to say something big. One of us had to say it. What happened to us? Where are we going? It was like this silence between us was frozen and we were both feeling our way around it. How is it that two people can need each...
Once she even successfully argued on behalf of my older brother, Dan, getting a BBGun, a weapon which he promptly turned against his younger siblings, outfitting us in helmet and leather jacket and instructing us to run across Eaton Park while he pra...
Let us be today’s Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today’s church. With Christ’s light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must b...
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take h...
door I thought about life and how it resembled a ladder. Do you ever feel that way? Like life is one big uphill climb and there are always more people and circumstances tripping us and trying to pull us back down the ladder, while very, very few peop...
