relationships and community on Destruction

When something has gone wrong, justice needs to be done and seen to be done. Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement examines exactly this same dynamic. The central character, Bryony Tallis, makes a grave mista...

In 1867, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel awoke one morning to read his own obituary in the local paper: “Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died yesterday, devised a way for more people to be ki...

Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if...

Whenever I have encountered any kind of deep problem with civilization anywhere in the world—be it the logging of rain forests, ethnic or religious intolerance or the brutal destruction of a cultural ...

In their excellent book, Mending the Divides , Jon Huckins and Jer Swigart describe a Japanese pottery tradition that articulates the power of peace and reconciliation: When we speak of peace, we c...

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

Max Lucado tells a true story showing that God's determination to shape His followers proves stronger than Satan's most persistent efforts to discourage them. What the enemy plans for destruc...

Generous God our Father – who gives us all good gifts: Gifts of life, love and, relationships; gifts of work and leisure, effort and rest; and, most of all, gifts of Your Son and our salvation, yo...

"Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering. There is non...

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east...

Father in Heaven, wisdom has called us to heed her voice. She has implored the simple to turn towards her truth, for the one who lacks sense to eat from her table. We have heard wisdom’s clarion cry, ...

Pastor: Heavenly Father, this morning as we worship in your presence, my mind settles on the fact that I have blown it. I’ve disobeyed your commandments, I’ve sinned so many times, and I have not love...

Praise the Lord, O my soul: And all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, Who heals all your d...

Leader: Let us worship the God who satisfies our every need, the Good Shepherd who guides us to abundance and refreshment. Let us praise the God who specializes in the restoration of the soul, who nav...

Heavenly Father, You and Your Gifts are Perfect. We are not. You lead us with abundant mercy, justice, and grace. We are slow to follow. We abandon the straight and narrow path of life in which You di...

Wake up! Get out of bed! Feel the sunlight on your face! Feel God’s bright glory has risen for you. But the earth is dark. Everywhere we look there is selfishness sin, greed, death, destruction. You ...

Judged in the light of any ordinary standards of regal splendor, military display, political campaigning, or effective advertising, it was a rather pathetic and anti-climactic affair. Jesus rode from ...

Being a peacemaker is part of being surrendered to God, for God brings peace. We abandon the effort to get our needs met through the destruction of enemies. God comes to us in Christ to make peace wit...

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

Love makes people do crazy things. The stories we tell in literature and film are full of examples of the crazy things people will do for love. Love empowers Odysseus through madness and suffering, dr...

Through the repeated hammer blows of defeat, destruction, and deportation, interpreted by the faithful prophets, Israel has to learn that election is not for comfort and security but for suffering and...

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Defilement is what sin does to us; damnation is what sin introduces as our eternal end. Except for God’s intervention. We have needs, and God addresses our needs. Even our sin, the most destructive re...

One of the ways we punish ourselves for not being more or better or thinner or stronger is by trying to squeeze ourselves—force ourselves, even—into all kinds of ill-fitting relationships. With other ...

The best way to destroy an enemy is to turn him into a friend.

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wi...

The absence of boundaries creates nonorder, and nonorder is not the end of exclusion but the end of life.

Even desolation is a world to be explored.

We would rather be ruined than changed We would rather die in our dread Than climb the cross of the moment And let our illusions die.

“Whom the gods wish to destroy,” Cyril Connolly famously said, “they first call promising.” Twenty-five hundred years before that, the elegiac poet Theognis wrote to his friend, “The first thing, Kurn...