psalms on Peace

Pastor: Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, with feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Go out into the world with joy and hope, standing firm in...

Pastor: Almighty and eternal God, we adore You as the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus, and with the whole Church on earth and all the hosts of heaven we ascribe to You honor and blessing...

Author and Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers suggests that instead of imagining a kingdom, a better way for us to understand what Jesus had in mind when he spoke of this script, this new way of livi...

Solitude is an opportunity to interrupt this cycle by turning off the noise and stimulation of our lives so that we can hear our loneliness and our longing calling us deeper into the only relationship...

God of mercy, deliver us from our fear in which we judge others. We pray for all who are oppressed, imprisoned, persecuted or rejected. To you who have delivered us from slavery we pray for the faith ...

Transcendent Lord, in the midst of ordinary days draw us to wonder to fall on our knees and cry, “Glory!” You are the Holy One, Above and Other. May we tremble, knowing how deeply you know us and lov...

Pastor: Peter calls on believers in exile to rid themselves of those things that would point themselves and others away from Christ.  Like the early church, we too are to rid ourselves of all mali...

Pastor: Lord God, we thank You that You have taught us what You would have us believe and do. Help us by Your Holy Spirit, for the sake of Jesus Christ, to hold fast Your Word in our hearts.  You ha...

A monk is a man who is separated from all and who is in harmony with all.

Phillips Brooks, the author of the famous hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” He wrote: Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life he is living, with the thoug...

In Lancelot , one of Walker Percy’s final novels, the narrator reflects on his own struggle with idleness and addiction to entertainment. In a poignant scene set outside his Mississippi mansion, ...

One of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and powe...

Where there’s humility there is majesty; where there’s weakness, there’s might; where there is death, there’s life. If you want to get these things don’t disdain those.

Gracious God, we desire to follow when your call. We long to live according to the ways of Jesus, yet we find ourselves stumbling. Forgive us for the times we have failed to follow your example of com...

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good new...

There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places.

A number of mature Christians have described the Christian journey as one in which the follower of Jesus experiences different levels of grace.  Let us imagine . . . that there are many rooms in t...

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

A fourteenth-century definition of courage is “to speak one’s mind by telling all of one’s heart.” Courage is connecting one’s heart back to one’s mind, stitching together the separated parts of ourse...

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...

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.

Pastor: We make our beginning in the name of Almighty God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. People: Amen.

I hold that in every situation of injustice and oppression, the Christian—who cannot deal with it by violence—must make himself completely a part of it as representative of the victims.

Josephine Bakhita’s life is a testament of God’s faithfulness in the darkest circumstances. She was born in Darfur, Sudan, among the Daju people. Her first years were happy, but at age eight she was k...

Especially in the Hebrew Bible, wilderness is the privileged site where God comforts the Hebrew people or their representatives at times of crisis in their lives. In the wilderness God calls and leads...

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

If you’ve been around a kid who’s just learned to ask “why?”, it can be a bit much. You’ll be asked, “why is grass green?” “Why do birds fly?” “Why do I get hungry?” and much, much, more.  Pa...

He also needed to take off his sandals, because God was too holy for his shoes. To this day in the Middle East, removing one’s sandals is a sign of respect.

WORDS. We think words, hear words, speak words, sing words, write words, and read words—all the time. Every day. What do words have to do with Christianity? Almost everything. At every stage in redemp...