faith and work on Sight

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

George Matheson was just entering the bewildering teenage years when doctors informed him he was going blind. Undeterred, he pressed on with his education and graduated from the University of Glasgow ...

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...

O God, Father of us all, we praise you for so binding humanity together that we must each lean upon the strength and labor of others. We ask your blessing on all men and women who have worked to build...

At least one day in every seven, pull off the road and park the car in the garage. Close the door to the tool shed and turn off the computer. Stay home, not because you are sick but because you are we...

Sabbath is not so much about a day off as it is a “day up”—a day to remember that He is God and we are not. Without Sabbath, we forget who we are and lose sight of who He is, leaving us to carry the w...

We swim in an ocean of feedback. Each year in the United States alone, every schoolchild will be handed back as many as 300 assignments, papers, and tests. Millions of kids will be assessed as they tr...

We swim in an ocean of feedback. Each year in the United States alone, every schoolchild will be handed back as many as 300 assignments, papers, and tests. Millions of kids will be assessed as they tr...

Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, of building a personality beyond its normal limitations.

Ignoring God's Stop Sign Have you ever been driving and inadvertently blown right through a stop sign?  It happened to me recently. Anne and I were down in San Francisco meeting some friends, I w...

If you were lucky enough to watch the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, you probably remember swimmer Michael Phelps bursting onto the international scene. Phelps won six medals in those ga...

Shalom is what the kingdom of God smells like.

A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.

If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for ten years, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.

Any manifestation that reveals Jesus’ true identity occurs because the power of God is at work upon the eyes, ears, and hearts of the recipients

Bit by intelligible bit, a vocation lets us express our healthiest instincts, our noblest desires… In small things and in large, we can attend to the haunting inner summons of our soul.

The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it.

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments. I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it…Taking your children to school and ki...

Elisabeth Elliot once stayed in the farmhouse of a Welsh shepherd and his family high in the mountains of North Wales. She stood watching one misty summer morning as the shepherd on horseback herded t...

Shalom is the breadth, depth, climate, and smell of the kingdom of God. It’s a counter-story, with nothing missing and nothing lost for everyone who reads it. We become peacemakers when we, through th...

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...

My thought it is a wanton ranger,  It skips away;  I fear 'twill bring my soul in danger  On Judgment Day...

To experience the richness of life in God's kingdom, we must reorder our lives. We need to see through the shallow promises of our culture, and we need rhythms, signposts, and practices that reori...

But you take pleasure in the faces Of those who know they thirst.

God’s garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. History without gardens would be a wasteland. What th...

Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves ...

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...