faith and work on Safety

The Great Wall of China was an immense and costly project, built with tremendous effort and resources, designed to provide security and protection. Yet, within a few years of its completion, it was br...

The soul is like a wild animal—tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, self-sufficient. It knows how to survive in hard places. But it is also shy. Just like a wild animal, it seeks safety in the dense ...

King Jesus, We confess that we are quick to put our hope in places other than You. We are often more driven by our fears than by our faith in You and Your Kingdom. We place our trust in health, jobs, ...

Gracious God of love–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We are grateful that You’ve revealed yourself to us, telling us that each of us are loved by You as children, each precious in Your sight, each a refl...

As early as April 2020, a debate raged about the responsibilities of those of us turned safely inside during this global storm. For those time privileged enough to find their calendars suddenly cleare...

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?

Sabbath [is about trust]. Sabbath is turning over to God all those things—our money, our work, our status, our reputations, our plans, our projects—that we’re otherwise tempted to hold tight in our ow...

Shalom is a persistent vision of joy, well-being, harmony, and prosperity, many dimensions and subtle nuances: love, loyalty, grace, salvation, justice, blessing, righteousness.” [Shalom is] the freig...

Ambition has no rest.

If you think of your identity and heart as an engine, you could say there is a kind of fuel that powers it cleanly and efficiently—and a kind of fuel that is not only polluting but also destroys the e...

We must do our business faithfully; without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to GOD mildly, and with tranquility, as often as we find it wandering from Him.

Shalom is turbocharged peace, full-spectrum peace, peace amplified. It involves the transformation of the personal, social and structural dimensions of life. Shalom includes human flourishing in all d...

He is a bold surgeon, they say, whose hand does not tremble when he performs an operation upon his own person; and he is often equally bold who does not hesitate to pull off the mysterious veil of sel...

Shalom is meant to be both personal (emphasizing our relationships with others) and structural (replacing systems where shalom has been broken or which produce broken shalom, such as war-or greed-driv...

Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act...

O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our comm...

In shalom, each person enjoys justice, enjoys his or her rights. There is no shalom without justice. But shalom goes beyond justice. Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relat...

Underneath our frantic pace is a question: Is this work I do good enough?

Sabbath is about four things: ceasing, resting, embracing, and feasting.

You stay alive in the practice of leadership by reducing the extent to which you become the target of people’s frustrations. The best way to stay out of range is to think constantly about giving the w...

Sabbath keeping is a spiritual strategy: it is a kind of judo. The world's commands are heavy; we respond with light moves. The world says work; we play. The world says go fast; we go slow. These ...

Keeping sabbath may involve us in relinquishing certain kinds of power on behalf of other kinds. If we allow it, sabbath may bring us to true authority, true power. The road is that of letting go, rat...

Never mistake motion for action.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

O God, our Guide and Guardian, you have led us apart from the busy world into the quiet of your house. Grant us grace to worship you in Spirit and in truth, to the comfort of our souls and the upbuild...

An understanding and living of Sabbath time can help support a sane and holy rhythm of life for us. With it, we are given an alternative to the culture’s growing movement between driven achievement an...

Faithful God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You are always there in times of transition or trial, times of uncertainty and anxiety, or times of accomplishment and celebration. You do not leave us nor fo...

If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest in our overly busy lives, illness becomes our—our pneumonia, our cancer, our heart attack, our accidents create for us.

O God of Peace, you have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and confidence shall be our strength; by the might of your spirit lift us, we pray to you, to your presenc...

As we keep or break the Sabbath day, we nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope by which man rises.