2 corinthians on Openness

It’s difficult for people to love the real you when you are covering up who you really are. We connect with others when we take our mask off and let others in.

The Servant Leader The servant leader is the hero of this text.  And the example,  par excellence,  is the Apostle Paul. He has never shied away from holding himself up as a person to be imitated, as...

preaching commentary The Servant Leader The servant leader is the hero of this text.  And the example,  par excellence,  is the Apostle Paul. He has never shied away from holding himself up as a pe...

Editors Note: This is perhaps less a review as a jumping off part to articulate some thoughts I developed while reading The Minority Experience. For a full review of the title, a cursory google search...

Open doors in the Bible never exist just for the sake of the people offered them. They involve opportunity, but it’s the opportunity to bless someone else. An open door may be thrilling to me, but it ...

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.

The pyschologist Carl Rogers, a person who would know quite well the interior lives of others, has this to say of our inmost thoughts: I have most invariably found that the very feeling which has see...

The improvisational ability to lead adaptively relies on responding to the present situation rather than importing the past into the present and laying it on the current situation like an imperfect te...

Relational congruence is the ability to be fundamentally the same person with the same values in every relationship, in every circumstance and especially amidst crisis. It is the internal capacity to ...

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then, and be “safe”?

Love to be unknown.

At their core, transitions are the internal adjustments by which we reorient ourselves to new environments, new experiences, and new seasons of life.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

The strangest thing happens when what we have most wanted to conceal is brought into the open. We don’t die. Instead, we often begin to heal.

In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...

Two kinds of blindness are easily combined so that those who do not see really appear to see what is not.

If I am in denial about my own weaknesses and sin, there will be a concomitant blindness to the greatness and glory of God.

The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma...

Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.

Our inclination is to reveal to God only what we feel comfortable in sharing. Naturally, we want to love and be loved by God, but we also want to keep a little corner of ourselves, where we can hide a...

Holy Trinity, Community of Love, Draw us together in your creative light Root us in the ground of your being, Vulnerable before one another, Unashamed in your presence and each other’s Make us joyfu...

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am...

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

Here is the uncomfortable truth: Humans run to a much slower evolutionary clock than our inventions. To use an engineering term, we are the “gating factor” that keeps a process from running faster. It...

Far too easily we settle for holiness rather than wholeness, conformity rather than authenticity, becoming spiritual rather than deeply human, fulfillment rather than transformation, and a journey tow...

If the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light—yet perhaps the . . . unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar...

All: Gracious God, you promise that your light drowns out darkness, yet the darkness is so persistent. We cannot see in front of us, so we look to our own knowledge and ways. Forgive us for turning to...

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...

All-knowing God, we often believe our way is the best way. In our arrogance, we ignore your will and your ways. We confess our dependence on knowledge and our independence from you. Thank you that you...