ruth on Relationships

It’s been said home is the place where they have to let you in. While it’s a reach to say I’m friends with each of my family members, our relationships thrive because we share a mutual, understood res...

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays.

I was listening to a lecture on friendship to prepare this sermon and the speaker used the movie The Bride of Frankenstein as an illustration. Now, for this to work, you have to put the movie Young...

Our current cultural moment makes rich, life-giving friendships like the one David and Jonathan shared a challenge. We are connected like never before, yet isolated and lonely like never before. MIT p...

The True Self is all about right relationship, not requirements. It’s not about being correct; it’s about being connected, which you always were—you just didn’t realize it.

My Great-Aunt May had a love affair when she was in her 70’s. Obese, balding, her hands and legs mishappen by arthritis, she did not fit the stereotype of a woman romatically loved. But she was — by a...

Friends are individuals who are relational assets and not liabilities. Friends are those whom God escorts into our environments because there is something they need to be for us in order to help us be...

Lamin Sanneh, the African theologian who would be pivotal in the development of missional theology, was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in Gambia. He found himself drawn to Christianity after e...

If I asked you the same question I asked my patient Aaron—“What do you want?”—and you could for a moment put aside the predictable anxiety that comes with it, I’m confident that at some point in your ...

Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the...

If Hollywood decided to make a movie about your life, what would it look like? What genre would it be? Action/Adventure? Drama? Comedy? Who would play you? Tom Cruise? Denzel Washington? For most of u...

Faith makes all things possible. Love makes all things easy.

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

"When someone loves you, the way they talk about you is different. You feel safe and comfortable."

Everyone longs to be loved. And the greatest thing we can do is to let people know that they are loved and capable of loving.

Love alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

Love cures people: the ones who receive love and the ones who give it, too.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? On the Road to Jerusalem Luke 13 begins with Jesus teaching on the nature of the kingdom of God and it concludes with our passage, in w...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? On the Road to Jerusalem Luke 13 begins with Jesus teaching on the nature of the kingdom of God and it concludes with ...

“I think... if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.”

To bless is to bridge. A blessing is a bridge to belonging, built right in the place we feel separated from hope. Words of blessing bring us back to the beautiful truth of being human: we belong to on...

To love is to will the good of another. .

The new command is simple enough for a toddler to memorize and appreciate, profound enough that the most mature believers are repeatedly embarrassed at how poorly they comprehend it and put it i...

To love means to open ourselves to suffering. Shall we shut our doors to love, then, and be “safe”?

Now of course, none of us is perfect, and all of us fail in all kinds of ways. That is why we often protect ourselves a bit when we say things like, “Don’t look at me, or don’t look at Christians; loo...

The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.

The daily e-newsletter 1440, tries to share regular stories of human kindness. This one, from Carl G. in Noblesville, Indiana, is quite touching:  My daughter just got married and was on Southwest...