isaiah on Perfectionism

Another one of the great ironies of retreat is that overachievers tend to approach retreat as a place to get something done. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone on retreat seriously intending...

The recognition of humanity's flawed nature is not exclusive to Christianity. Aristotle, in his work Ethics , compares human nature to a warped piece of wood. To rectify this warp, a skilled ...

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...

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life…. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for pe...

Christmas is Over It’s Christmas morning, not yet light. I am ten years old, creeping down the stairs, and I am full of hope. My siblings and I were told there will be no Christmas. Our mother told u...

The mystery of perfection as an aspect of beauty is its transcendence. It points to a glory beyond itself. I knew that when I held my children, I didn’t simply cradle flesh and blood. I held a living ...

In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas codified beauty as being directly connected to Jesus Christ with three characteristic features. He wrote, “Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of...

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...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity. Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

You’re afraid? So what. Everybody’s afraid. Fear is the common ground of humanity. The question you must wrestle to the ground is, ‘Will I allow my fear to bind me to mediocrity?’

Humility is perfect quietness of heart. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am bla...

I would later learn that these are two characteristics of beauty: it never stays, and it never fully satisfies.

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

We all go through desert seasons and have the opportunity to determine how we will respond. The cyclical frustrations I faced in regard to my desire for control, fear, and the longing to feel chosen w...

Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

We cannot prioritize our doing before being, our assignment before healing, our service before freedom.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

Gracious Father, too often we base our worth on our performance. We believe if we do well, your love grows, and if we falter, your love lessens. Our God, how far this is from the truth. We confess our...

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Desire lies at the heart of who God made us to be, who we are at our core. Desire is both our greatest frailty and the mark of our highest beauty. Our desire completes us as we become One with our Lov...

Each one of us is called to live the truth of our unrepeatable uniqueness. We are not meant to model ourselves after others, however wonderful they may be. A delightful Jewish parable makes this point...

Insecurity is a funny thing. It makes us into someone we’re not as a way to cope with someone we used to be. For me, it started at home. Growing up, my dad had been critical of my mother’s weight, and...

In Luke Norsworthy’s book, God over Good , he describes the curiosity of a new friend whose bedroom was, to use his own words, “immaculate.” At the time this seemed strange, but in hindsight, and wit...

Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by! The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; Our spirits resound with clashing, with noisy silences, While some...

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

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.