psalms on Choices

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

On a daily basis we’re faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging t...

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...

Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.

Faith isn’t a feeling; it’s a choice to trust God even when the road ahead seems uncertain.

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; ...

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...

Change invariably leads to loss, loss to grief, grief to anxiety and, finally, anxiety to hostility. We need therefore, to acknowledge grief. We need to understand and choose to walk with the grieving...

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...

It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

There is a tendency among readers and scholars of Genesis 2:16-17 to focus on the prohibition of verse 17: “but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.” …I want to pause to cons...

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...

Because of this we have hope: Two men look out through the same bars One sees mud, one sees stars.

It is the prerogative and charm of beauty to win hearts.

God of grace, power and glory – Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer – and our Father: When we’re tempted to think it’s all up to us: to change the world, to overcome evil, to establish Your kingdom. to m...

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...

The man of pseudo faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get into a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself...

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 ...

Father–nothing escapes your notice, is beyond your care or too hard for you to take on, whether it concerns nations or individuals. You have a heart for all the world–not just our little piece of it. ...

Peter Drucker suggests that we should always sustain two streams of learning and self-improvement. And though he is speaking specifically about work and career, what he says is equally applicable whet...

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!  Let the dead Past bury its dead!  Act,—act in the living present!  Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Eternal and Beautiful God, The One who births us and names us Grant us perspective A holy centering of truth, humility, and our belovedness Not too high that we fall away from you our need of you our...

When God wants to sort out the world, as the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount make clear, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the broken, the justice hungry, the peacemakers, the ...

I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted, because of all the desires I have ever known, just one did I cling to for it was the essence of all desire: to hold beauty in my soul’s arms.

As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

Eternal and Generous God, Every good gift comes from You. Your generosity is expressed best Through Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, Who gave Himself for us. We acknowledge we often doubt Your will...

Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...

Contentment makes much of little; greed makes little of much. Contentment is the poor man’s riches and desire the rich man’s poverty.