The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given,...
In her excellent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren describes an encoutner her husband experienced while working on his PhD. While my husband, Jonathan, was getting...
We can learn a thing or two about discipleship and the discipline required of a disciple from our fourth-century monastic brothers and sisters. Like them, we do basic, ordinary activities every day. W...
W.H. Auden is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century. Auden grew up in England but spent some of his adult years in the United States. In November 1939, he found himself in a German-language mo...
The award-winning and now venerable filmmaker Wim Wenders recently put out a new movie called “Perfect Days.” It was filmed in Japan and follows the daily life of Hirayama, a cleaner of public t...
Exodus 16:23, 29–30, Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11, Mark 6:31, Matthew 11:28–29, Philippians 4:6–7, Psalm 23:1–3
Thank you, Lord,
for this season
of sun and slow motion,
of games and porch sitting,
of picnics and light green fireflies
on heavy purple evenings;
and praise for slight breezes.
It’s good, God...
As a study assistant to the Anglican pastor and writer John Stott during my early years as a believer, I witnessed John’s faithfulness in public and private, as a highly visible speaker and as a nearl...
Isaiah 40:31, Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 , Matthew 11:28-30, Luke 10:38-42, Philippians 4:6-7, Psalm 131:1-2
[T]he old adage “it’s the journey, not the destination that matters most” is particularly true of modern pilgrimage. If the destination is the point, I can get to Santiago from anywhere in the world i...
During a retreat at the Taizé compound in France, a young American shared a remarkable discovery. He said: “Back home, surrounded by all my possessions, I often feel uncertain about many things. Here,...
Our family is radical, but we are definitely not Amish—although we love to eat the fruit, vegetables, meat, and cheese produced by our Amish neighbors forty miles away in Lancaster County, Pennsylvani...
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity. On the near side of complexity is simplistic; on the far...
Gracious God, too often we believe that our hard work should earn us comfort, conveniences, and control. Too often, we rely on our own abilities to craft and maintain a life independent from You. Forg...
John 15:5, Philippians 4:13, 1 Corinthians 4:7 , James 1:17, Deuteronomy 8:17-18, 2 Corinthians 3:5, Luke 18:18-30
Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...
A Great (and Weighty) Work of Literature That Will Delight Like Moby Dick and War and Peace , Les Misérables is a hefty novel. Affectionately known as the ‘Brick’ for its formidable length, it c...
[Speaking about art] As you climb the stairs of quality, you’ll meet individual works that you’ll need for the rest of your life, works that will thrill you, energize you, lift your soul, soothe you, ...
With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...
John 15:5, Hebrews 13:5, Luke 10:41-42, Psalm 23:1, 1 Timothy 6:6-8, Matthew 6:19-21, Philippians 4:11-13
Philip Yancey writes of a spiritual seeker who interrupted his busy, acquisitive life to spend a few days in a monastery. “I hope your stay is a blessed one,” said the monk who showed him to his simpl...
In a commencement speech at Rice University around the turn of the century (the 21st century to be precise) the author Kurt Vonnegut shared some of the wisdom of his life. He went on to share a story ...
A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act li...
But hope is hard to come by. I should know. I remember the time when I was once busy dying. It wasn’t long after I had broken my neck in a diving accident that I spent one particularly hopeless week i...
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; ...
Pastor: Oh Lord our God, we have forgotten who you are and what you have done for us. Your great and miraculous works for us are lost in the recesses of our minds, and we could not care less about you...
Leader : Let us go before our God, confessing the ways we have dismissed His plan for internal peace from our lives. Leader : Heavenly Father, we crave rest and seek it everywhere but with You...
Journalist Eric Severeid recalls a valuable lesson he learned at seventeen while preparing for an ambitious journey. He and a friend had set out to canoe from Minneapolis to the historic fur-trading p...
Psalm 121:1-2, Hebrews 12:2, Isaiah 26:3, Philippians 4:6-7, Matthew 14:29-31
A man who worked at an aviary in a bird park went to an outdoor wedding. He kept looking up until a friend finally asked him why. The man replied, “Sorry, I’m used to looking up to avoid falling bird ...
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 ...
Isaiah 43:19, Song of Solomon 4:7, Philippians 4:8, 2 Corinthians 4:16, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Psalm 147:3, Isaiah 61:3
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...
Psalm 23:1-3, Matthew 22:37-39, Isaiah 30:21, Psalm 37:4, Philippians 4:6-7
If there’s one thing I know for sure in the kingdom of God it’s this: the thing we often think is The Thing is often not the thing but is, in fact, only a thing. We come forward with a Huge Life Decis...
Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Historical Background We need to understand several things about Psalm 107 before we can put it all together. First, it is the beginning psalm of Book...