relationships and community on Exclusion

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

God of love—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You loved us before we ever knew You. Give us such a deep love for You, that we can see the world as You see it, feel the compassion You feel, and be a people ...

Gracious God, today we think of those we have ignored when they were suffering, excluded when they different, written off when they were difficult, harassed when they were our enemies. We take this mo...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

Father of heirs and orphans, Salvation of saint and sinner, Draw near and forgive us. Forgive us for clinging to law more than grace. Forgive us for choosing slavery when you offer us adoption. Forgi...

Lord, you whose Son did pray that all your children might be one, we come with repentance for the sin of useless division and for the secret vice of pride. We beg forgiveness for harsh judgment, for p...

Isaiah 56:8 says, “The Sovereign Lord declares – he who gathers the exiles of Israel: ‘I will gather yet others to him besides those already gathered.’” Sisters and brothers, the Lord grants us forgiv...

He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.