christian living on Tolerance

A number of women at Kairos Los Angeles have at times assisted a local ministry that helps women who are in transition. They provide housing and often help these women find jobs. Some of these women s...

It takes a profound conversion to accept that God is relentlessly tender and compassionate toward us just as we are—not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be total acceptance), but with t...

Gracious God, you have given us great mercy through Jesus, yet we have withheld mercy from others. Our hearts have been hardened by the world and our sin. Would you soften our hearts? And give us a de...

If I withhold mercy, I have lost touch with the gospel. I have lost touch with God’s undeserved kindness and pardon.

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

To abide in love means to have open eyes, to be able to see something that only a few see, namely, the outstretched, begging hands of the others who are along the way, and now not be able to do anythi...

Faith is nothing else than trust in the divine mercy promised in Christ…. This trust in the goodwill or mercy of God first calms our hearts and then inflames us to give thanks to God for his mercy so ...

Almighty God, too often we settle for brokenness in our lives. Rather than offering forgiveness, we hold onto offense. Rather than pursuing justice, we turn away . Rather than offering mercy, we c...

God's mercy to us is the motivation for showing mercy to others. Remember, you will never be asked to forgive someone else more than God has forgiven you.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficie...

In the Christian faith, we frequently take for granted how radically Jesus evens the playing field. No matter your wealth, your position, let alone your race or gender, all of us are equal in God’s ey...

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

Christian civility does not commit us to a relativistic perspective. Being civil doesn’t mean that we cannot criticize what goes on around us.  …Civility is a different matter, though. I can treat ...

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful.

Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than receive.” “Well,” you say “that is a nice theory—but is it really true?” There is really only one way to find out: Give! Give generously and consistently, ...

Like the Good Samaritan, may we not be ashamed of touching the wounds of those who suffer, but try to heal them with concrete acts of love.

For the times we neglect to care for our brothers and sisters in Christ, please forgive us, Lord. For the times we fail to welcome new people who look or act different from ourselves, please forgiv...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace ...

God of mercy, we ignore the needs of people around us all too often. We get caught up in our own issues and forget that there are millions of people who struggle for basic necessities on a daily basis...

Justice is for those who deserve it; mercy is for those who don't.

In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...

Free us, Lord, from our obsession with ourselves long enough to care for others; to be so concerned about the well-being of the human community that me don’t have to worry about our place, our church,...

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

I was driving in Columbus, Ohio, when I came upon a hitchhiker who alternated between holding his thumb out and clasping his hands together as if he were praying. I picked him up. His name was Mike, a...

One day, as Leo Tolstoy, the renowned Russian author, was walking down the street when he encountered a man in worn, shabby clothing. The homeless man asked him if he had any money to spare. Tolstoy s...

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence…. Faith, being belief that isn...

What I’ve come to realize is if I really want to “meet Jesus,” then I have to get a lot closer to the people He created. All of them, not just some of them.

I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk, or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of God t...

Lord, help us to be a people known for the ways in which we live out our faith by loving and serving all people, even those who, in the world’s eyes, have little to offer us. By treating them with dig...