1 kings on Deprivation

The drug problems in the U.S. demonstrate this pattern: by heightening powers of perception, chemical stimulants open up a new world to a generation that has never learned to appreciate fully the worl...

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”

Contentment makes much of little; greed makes little of much. Contentment is the poor man’s riches and desire the rich man’s poverty.

The sin of injustice is defined in the Bible as the abuse of power—abusing power by taking from others the good things that God intended for them, namely, their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits o...

Scripture also speaks of “discernment of spirits” and encourages us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” This aspect of discernment helps us to distinguish the real from the phony, ...

Robert Lupton offers insight into the complexities of human impoverishment, reminding us that in spite of our best intentions sometimes our philanthropic efforts can yield unintended consequences: “Wh...

Solitude is an opportunity to interrupt this cycle by turning off the noise and stimulation of our lives so that we can hear our loneliness and our longing calling us deeper into the only relationship...

Get to know someone really well, and almost without fail, you will discover a person who routinely struggles to get out of bed in the morning. And not just because they’re tired. They can’t get out of...

We would do well to keep in mind that Solomon’s words on the necessity of friendship were written toward the end of his life, well after he scaled his own Mount Significance. His accomplishments were ...

But you take pleasure in the faces Of those who know they thirst.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

People in a hurry never have time for recovery. Their minds have little time to meditate and pray so that problems can be put in perspective. In short, people in our age are showing signs of physiolog...

Jesus reminds us that the wounds of scarcity can be healed only by faith in God’s promise of abundance.

At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being “judgmental.” He found ...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

A therapist once told me that the most common complaint he heard from his patients was the feeling that they didn’t belong. The feeling of being an imposter, or of being outside things, of not fitting...

I was recently at a eight-year-old’s birthday party, and at this birthday party there was a piñata. All of the kids took turns whacking a paper mache shark with a PVC pipe until eventually the shark b...

When we have exhausted our store of endurance, When our strength has failed ere that day is half done, When we reach the end of our hoarded resources, Our Father’s full giving has only begun. His lo...

13-year-old Mary is having a tough day and has stretched herself out on the couch to do a bit of what she thought to be well-deserved complaining and self-pitying. She moans to her Mom and brother, “N...

When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...

Dangerous levels of exhaustion usually accumulate over a longer period of time in which we are consistently living beyond human limits, functioning outside our giftedness, or not paying attention to t...

Who cannot relate in the digital age to the irony of being overconnected and lonely all at once? Yet Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking at his son’s middle school graduation, exhorted the young grad...

In our modern materialistic world, it is easy to lose sight of that sense of longing. In her wonderful collection of essays Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard speaks about that growing void...

Ministers run the awful risk . . . of ceasing to be witnesses to the presence in their own lives — let alone in the lives of the people they are trying to minister to — of a living God who transcends ...

Have you ever seen As Good As It Gets, the late-nineties film starring Jack Nicholson? In it, Nicholson plays a cranky, misanthropic writer in New York City, snapping at anyone who crosses his p...

Rabbi Hugo Gryn used to tell of his experiences in Auschwitz as a boy. Food supplies were meager, and the inmates took care to preserve every scrap that came their way. When the Festival of Hanukkah a...

What do you want to achieve? Greater riches? Cheaper chicken? A happier life, a longer life? Is it power over your neighbors that you are after? Are you only running away from your death? Or are you s...

Life is always dull and insipid to those who have no great works on their hands to do and no lofty ideals to elevate their spirits.