relationships and community on Hatred

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual...

God, our Father: Your love gives us more than we can ever hope for, and far beyond what we deserve. You clothe us in the righteousness of Christ. You give us dreams and visions of what we can become b...

God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We need to hear Your invitation and promise to come to us when we are weary and burdened, and you’ll give us rest ... rest for our souls. So we come. We come with our...

Father, Son, Holy Spirit–our God, Mysterious, Awe-Inspiring, Wonderful, One-in-Three/Three-in-One: You surprise us not with flashing lights, loud crashing noises, and constant activity. You surprise u...

Philip Yancey writes of a friend whose marriage was choked by hostility. One night the friend reached the breaking point: “I hate you!” he screamed at his wife. “I won’t take it any more. I’ve had eno...

Thank You, Lord, for the gifts of life, of love and of care that come from You, wrapped in our moms and step-moms, in our grand-moms, great-grandmas, daughters, sisters, and aunts. We’re grateful for...

While I was born much too late to be the legal property of a person in America, I have been the recipient of racism. When a classmate called me a racial epithet in my first year of college, I was deva...

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.

All that I ever really needed to know about uncivil language I learned in the fifth grade. At a small Dutch Calvinist school in a New Jersey city, I was playing with other students just before classes...

What can we say, O Lord, to justify ourselves? You shower us with grace upon grace. Your mercies are new every morning. And we find it hard to forgive others. Sometimes we are petty and hold grudges f...

Let us love the Lord God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Let us love Him with all our understanding, powers, and fortitude. Let us offer to Him our every effort, ...

Dear God, Sometimes fear is an idol that we believe will help us control our lives. Sometimes fear is a companion that we let take the place of You. Sometimes fear is the enemy that tells us You are n...

Change invariably leads to loss, loss to grief, grief to anxiety and, finally, anxiety to hostility. We need therefore, to acknowledge grief. We need to understand and choose to walk with the grieving...

Our godlike beauty is hidden beneath curtains of shame.

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

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.

God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. God bless us with righteous anger at injustice, oppression, and exp...

Dear Heavenly Father, We are grateful that we can come to You at any time, about anything. We know that You listen to the earnest cries of our hearts. We know that You have great power; You are the Cr...

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light fo...

Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers them out of them all. He protects all of their bones. Not one of them is broken. Evil shall kill the wicked. Those who hate the righteo...

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.

There was a time when adults were neatly categorized into one of two groups: you were either neurotic or psychotic. Psychotic meant that you were out of touch with reality and afraid; neurotic meant t...

Dear Christ, hasten to me. Release me from my sins. Free my arms from the chains of evil, that I may embrace you. Lift the scales of ignorance from my eyes, that I may see you. Why do you delay? What ...

There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experienc...

In her beautifully written memoir Unafraid, Susie Davis reflects on fear after experiencing a school-shooting as a high-school student. It was after this that Davis began to experience regular bouts o...

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 ...

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

Adversity is not simply a tool. It is God's most effective tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. The circumstances and events that we see as setbacks are oftentimes the very things that...

I’ve learned that Jesus is both terribly dangerous and terribly safe. For the proud, he is the biggest threat imaginable. And for the humble, he is the securest refuge.