Acts 4:32-35, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 14:13-21, 1 Kings 17:8-16, Exodus 16:1-36, John 6:35, 2 Corinthians 1:3-5
God—Father, Son and Spirit; You are a God of compassion and love. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, we’ve known Your love, and experienced Your care and provision. Repeatedly You’ve answered our ...
Introduction Believed to be some of Paul’s last words of his long ministry, 2 Tim. 4:6ff are Paul’s closing remarks to his beloved disciple, Timothy. Imprisoned in Rome by this point, Paul concludes ...
Romans 8:38-39, Acts 16:25-34, Ruth 1:16, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 9:20-22
Father—you know us like no-one else; and ...You love us like no-one else. Thank You for your manifold gifts. For the gift of life—we thank You. For the gift of each new day—we thank You. For the gift ...
In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...
Preaching Commentary Introduction Believed to be some of Paul’s last words of his long ministry, 2 Tim. 4:6ff are Paul’s closing remarks to his beloved disciple, Timothy. Imprisoned in Rome by this...
Luke 24:44–53, Acts 1:1-11, John 7:33-34, Mark 16:19
Leader: O righteous Father, Your Son obeyed Your holy will for the sake of our salvation. Through Your Spirit, give Your Church on earth unity of faith, that the world may know that You sent Your So...
Leader: O righteous Father, Your Son obeyed Your holy will for the sake of our salvation. Through Your Spirit, give Your Church on earth unity of faith, that the world may know that You sent Your Son ...
Acts 16:25-34, Genesis 45:1-15, Mark 2:1-12, Psalm 46:9, Isaiah 61:1
Gracious God of love–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We are grateful that You’ve revealed yourself to us, telling us that each of us are loved by You as children, each precious in Your sight, each a refl...
2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35, Isaiah 41:8-10, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Psalm 46:, Genesis 37:12-36, 1 Samuel 19:, 1 Samuel 20:, 2 Corinthians 11:23-30, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Acts 21:27-36
For seven years, Terry Anderson was held as a hostage of Shiite Muslim fundamentalists. The former reporter for the Associated Press had been taken captive and held as a political prisoner, and for se...
We were created to communicate, to speak truth fully to one another, so that we might be members of one another. To be members of one another means we must learn to trust one another. Trust, like trut...
We must learn to see our limits as the entrance into the good life, not what bars us from it. But as we grow older, waiting feels like an inconvenience or affront. We take out our phones when we’re...
Ambiguity may keep people up nights, but anyone seeking exquisite simplicity in his or her career ought to look for a non-leadership position. Leaders, by definition, have followers. Followers need di...
Introduction There are two significant ways in which waiting is central to our passage today. First, there is the waiting to be reunited with the apostle Paul and the fledgling church in Thessalonica...
After twenty years of listening to the yearnings of people’s hearts [as a counselor], I am convinced that all human beings have an inborn desire for God.
1 Samuel 3:1-10, Isaiah 30:21, 1 Kings 19:11-13 , John 10:27, Acts 8:26-40, Psalm 32:8
In the early days of my experiments in listening to the Lord, I sensed a distinct word to call a friend, a chaplain at a local college, and see how he was doing. The word carried with it the marks of ...
Many of us presume that atheists and agnostics don’t think or care one bit for God. But this is not the case. Heinrich Böll, a German writer and devout Catholic, once joked, “I don’t like these atheis...
Hosea 1:null, Hosea 2:null, Hosea 3:null, Matthew 16:18, Mark 10:13-16, John 3:16, Romans 5:8, 1 John 4:9-10, Ephesians 2:4-5, Acts 4:9-10, Acts 13:9
Here’s a testimony from Lisa Sharon Harper, author of The Very Good Gospel: Harper grew up as a child of a single mother. After her parents divorced, she and her mother moved from Philadelphia where ...
1 John 4:10, Acts 16:25-34, Matthew 14:22-33, 1 John 4:16, Psalm 139:11-12, Romans 8:38-39, John 1:5
“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”
“If there is no God, never was a God, why do we miss him so much?” asked one agnostic European Jew as he looked back on the horrors of the twentieth century.
1 Peter 2:12, Galatians 3:26-28, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, John 13:34-35, Acts 2:42-47, Matthew 28:19-20, James 2:17-18
In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...
Several years ago I saw a television show called Caught on Camera . It featured clips of people being secretly filmed doing all manner of horrific things, precisely because they thought they were...
Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 16:24, Acts 2:44-45, James 2:14-17, Mark 10:43-45, 1 John 3:17-18, John 13:14-15, Isaiah 58:6-7
Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...
Luke 24:1-12, Luke 15:11-32, Acts 7:54-60, John 21:15-19, Matthew 25:1-13, Revelation 22:12
Even as we eagerly await your return, Lord Jesus, we must confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart, with our entire mind, nor with all of our strength. We have loved our rituals and our...
John 3:8, Acts 1:8, John 16:7-15, Acts 2:4, 1 Corinthians 12:4-7, Romans 8:14, Ephesians 5:18-19
In my experience, take the Holy Spirit out of the equation of your life and it spells boring. Add it into the equation of your life and you never know where you are going to go, what you are going to ...
James 1:19, Proverbs 17:27-28, Matthew 5:9, Luke 10:38-42, James 1:17, Acts 20:35, 2 Chronicles 13:11
The monks at a remote monastery deep in the woods followed a rigid vow of silence. Their vow could only be broken once a year—on Christmas—by one monk. That monk could speak only one sentence. One Chr...
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.
1 Peter 4:9, Matthew 25:34-46, Leviticus 19:34, Acts 28:2, Isaiah 58:7
A Catholic priest recently told a gathering of friends about a time when he arrived in Israel late on a Friday afternoon, just as everything was about to shut down for the Sabbath. Public transportati...
Matthew 9:35-10, Deuteronomy 6:6-8, 1 Corinthians 3:7, Acts 1:null
Here Comes the Crowd Though he was challenging and divisive, Jesus always could draw a crowd. Some came because he had miraculously healed the lame or fed thousands. Others were there for the scandal...
Almighty and Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being, who has created us for yourself, so that our hearts are restless until they find rest in you, grant to us purity of heart and...