isaiah on elections (political)

Lord—Creator, Savior and Sustainer: You called our names and we answered. When we were lost—You found us. When we were sick—You healed us. When we were blind—You opened our eyes. When we were dea...

Good and Gracious Lord, You hold us in the palm of Your strong hand, working all things for our good and to Your glory. There’s no place we can go that escapes Your notice and is hidden from Your lovi...

You know all about us–our weakness, our failing, our sin; and you still love us enough to give your Son to redeem us. Hear the cries of our hearts today. There’s someone for whom it was hard to get ou...

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual...

Lord—you not only know all things... You notice all things. You notice when we are joyful—and You laugh, too. You notice when we are in grief or despair—and you cry with us. When we are alone or confu...

God of grace and God of glory on your people pour your power...Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour. Lord—we need You...today, tomorrow and forever. We need you to heal those ...

Faithful and Good God–our Father, Redeemer and Companion. You know all about us–and love us anyhow; nothing we are or do surprises you or puts you off. Therefore, we turn to you with assurance and tru...

Every voting choice you exercise ought to be for the candidate, platform, party, or policy that will best represent the values of the kingdom of God.

Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach an...

In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Invitations are powerful. Like tides, they ebb and flow, shaping the contours of our existence. Some invitations we desperately want but never get—“Will you marry me?” or “Would you consider a promoti...

With a certain oversimplification we can trace easily enough the three options open to Jews in Jesus’ day. … First, the quietist and ultimately dualist option, taken by the writers of the Dead Sea Scr...

The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

The pioneering work of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has been popularized in recent years by the gamut of notable thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and, in this cas...

Pastor: Now to God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout (insert your community) and the surrounding communities, who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sa...

Crises, and pressures for change, confront individuals and their groups at all levels, ranging from single people, to teams, to businesses, to nations, to the whole world. Crises may arise from extern...

A physician, a civil engineer, and a politician were arguing about what was the oldest profession in the world. The physician remarked, “Well, in the Bible, it says that God created Eve from a rib tak...

When you take "personal" attacks personally, you unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action-you make yourself the issue. Attacks may be personal, understan...

One of the reasons I love a good invitation is that I get tired of being told what to do. As the very responsible oldest daughter of a pastor and someone who entered vocational ministry at a young age...

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Many people have misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that religious views shouldn’t play a role in public discussions and lawmaking. Someone might say, “We shouldn’t restrict abo...

It doesn’t matter what the specific decision is. Unmade decisions hold power. They pull, they push, they interrupt where they aren’t wanted and poke us awake at night. They can turn us into strange ve...

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older. “Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the ol...

We would like a church that again asserts that God, not nations, rules the world, that the boundaries of God's kingdom transcend those of Caesar, and that the main political task of the church is ...

In this poem by Lord Byron, the poet re-imagines the ancient battle of Salamis, in which Xerxes, king of Persia was defeated by a Greek coalition in 480 B.C. The poem highlights how quickly the fortun...

To decide requires a death, a dying to a thousand options, the putting aside of a legion of possibilities in order to choose just one. De- cide . Homo- cide . Sui- cide . Patri- cide . The root word d...

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

Equity in law is the same that the spirit is in religion, what everyone pleases to make it: sometimes they go according to conscience, sometimes according to law, sometimes according to the rule of co...