2 corinthians on People

Pastor: Let us pray for the whole people of God in Christ Jesus and for everyone according to their needs. Holy Lord, all glory and praise are offered to You, for You are our Redeemer and King, o...

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...

“When you blow out the candles in that 50th birthday cake your first thought is going to be, ‘The fewer people I have anything to do with, the better off I’m going to be.’” *for contrast (and...

The Scottish pastor Ian MacLaren (1850–1907), renowned for his stories set in rural Scotland, was once asked near the end of his career what he would have done differently. His response was both simpl...

God, our Creative Father, Living Lord, and Holy Spirit: You call us by name and make us Your own–but you don’t leave us alone. You put us in relationships, families, and churches for our encouragemen...

People by nature build, tear down, and rebuild. We build our hopes, get disappointed, and then search for renewed hope.

Arguments won’t change people. Simply giving away kindness won’t either. Only Jesus has the power to change people, and it will be harder for them to see Jesus if their view of Him is blocked by our b...

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...

The Leader and People pray responsively Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church; That we all may be one. Grant that every member of the Church may truly and humbly serve you; That your Nam...

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.

His tattoos were flames that licked their way up his neck to his cheekbones. I had caught sight of him only from a distance while I was preaching, a visitor I’d not yet had a chance to meet. But this ...

Go now, as people who bear witness to the power of God in the world. Go, bearing God’s peace to the places and people who you will encounter. Go, as representatives of Christ’s salvation, in the power...

Leader: We are people of the resurrection. Witnesses to God’s glorious victory in Jesus Christ, which brings peace and transforms the power structures of this world. But we also know that we live in ...

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light, but who see nothing in wood, sea, or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in books.... It were better far to sail forever in the night of blind...

Offending people is a necessary and healthy act.  Every time you say something that’s offensive to another person, you just caused a discussion.  You just forced them to have to think.

We don’t come to Him as bad people trying to become good people; we come as rebels to lay down our arms.

Maybe God has given some people belief like a pier, to stand on (and God has given those people’s steadiness to the church, to me, as a reminder, as an aid), and maybe God has given others something e...

Lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.

We all know people who have been made much meaner and more irritable and more intolerable to live with by suffering: it is not right to say that all suffering perfects. It only perfects one type of pe...

In March 2009, we received the results from the widest religious survey conducted in the United States, the ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) study. There is much to gain from this repor...

I once heard a sermon that compared believers to commercials for God. “And God doesn’t need any bad commercials,” I remember the preacher saying. It stuck with me, and from then on I often made decisi...

Pastor: Satan and the powers of darkness seek to divide and destroy. And all too often God’s people either run from the battle in fear and defeat, or pick up the wrong weapons in the fight, relying ...

Pastor: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,  People: the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,  Pastor: who comforts us in all our troubles,  Pe...

Almighty God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We ask Your blessing on the people in this place. May the despairing find hope—and proud be humbled. May the doubting find faith—and the anxious be encouraged...

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...

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...

Bear one another’s burdens, the Bible says. It is a lesson about pain that we all can agree on. Some of us will not see pain as a gift; some will always accuse God of being unfair for allowing it. But...

God of grace, love, and hope–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You know and understand us–not just because You made us in Your image, and not just because You are omniscient and all wise. You took on flesh...

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...

One of my favorite sayings is, no matter how difficult it is to hear, “Reality is always your friend.”