christian living on Bitterness

As we pour out our bitterness, God pours in his peace.

Faith makes all evil good to us, and all good better; unbelief makes all good evil, and all evil worse. Faith laughs at the shaking of the spear; unbelief trembles at the shaking of a leaf, unbelief s...

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...

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of persons I know who model for me the depths of spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary bat...

Reading the Bible without applying it to your life can be downright dangerous. On August 3, 1996, Melvin Hitchens, sat on his front porch and read the Bible. After his Bible reading, this 66 year old ...

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...

People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic securit...

How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

If your salvation does not include living with God in beauty, truth, and goodness, it’s going to be a very dry haul. And so much of our difficulty today for Christians in this world, and for the world...

In one of the classic scenes from Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist, the misfortunate young orphan, Oliver, is stuck in a workhouse, laboring for long hours and getting barely enough gruel to keep h...

Pastor: O Spirit of God, help my infirmities. When I am pressed down because of my sin, perplexed and not knowing what to do, help me. All: When you see that I desire evil things, delighting in sinf...

Jesus says: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.” “Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.” Bles...

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...

Many years ago a senior executive of the then Standard Oil Company made a wrong decision that cost the company more than $2 million. John D. Rockefeller was then running the firm. On the day the news ...

We all need [blessing] desperately. It is the one great need we all share in common. We were born for it and there is no lasting joy without it. What oxygen is for the lungs and protein for the body, ...

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

Contentment is when we tell the Shepherd that His provision is enough for all our physical and material needs. If our old car gimps down the road, that is fine. If we get a shiny newer auto with less ...

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, has made more money in a single day than Heller had earned fro...

Humility brings peace, for when we reach the low place, we needn’t worry about falling down anymore.

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...

“[Zach] had gone from seeing beauty in the midst of suffering to creating it. He had taken this thing that could have suffocated him with despair and stripped it down until all that was left was hope....

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...

It is important to learn hoping. Its work does not despair, it fell in love with succeeding rather than with failure. Hoping, located above fearing, is neither passive like the latter nor imprisoned i...

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...

A student of mine called me late one evening after worship. He was really excited on the other end, and I had to ask him to slow down. So, he says, “Mother Kim, this strange thing happened to me today...

Gratitude has a ripple effect, spreading warmth and positivity to those around us. It is nearly impossible to hold onto resentment or self-pity while maintaining a grateful heart. John Kavanaugh share...

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 ...

The wounded gladiator forswears all fighting, but soon forgetting his former wound resumes his arms.

It is no stretch to say that the Lord may orchestrate amazingly challenging circumstances for you and your family for the primary purpose of giving your supernatural hope and Christian contentment a p...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often see difficult circumstances and discouragement as barriers to doing the work you have called us to do. Rather than rejoicing in what you have provided, we lam...