relationships and community on Hard-Heartedness

Victorious Christ Our Sovereign and Savior We cry out for your saving power Reveal your healing and wholeness In our sickness, our suffering Our lamenting, our loss Reveal your healing and wholeness...

Gracious God, you have given us great mercy through Jesus, yet we have withheld mercy from others. Our hearts have been hardened by the world and our sin. Would you soften our hearts? And give us a de...

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

Leader: The word of the Lord to the prophet Isaiah says: You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive. For this people's heart has grown dull, and with the...

Prayer of Confession All: Certainly God is good to his people, to those pure in heart, but as for me, I nearly stumbled; I nearly lost my sure footing. I struggle with envy as I look at the those in ...

Holy God, we know that you created us in love, to enjoy this world and You, to serve your creation and your children. And we know that we do not do your will. With clenched hands, we can neither give...

This prayer, by Rev. Lisa Degrenia, is intended as a way to honor and support the veterans in your community and their families. It may be included anywhere in the service, but is especially well suit...

One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

One of humanity’s problems is forgetfulness. Forgetfulness can happen at multiple levels, from a simple problem of recall to a posture of hard-heartedness and disobedience toward the command-giver. Wh...

Forgiving the unforgivable is hard. So was the cross: hard words, hard wood, hard nails.

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

“A heart can be broken, but it keeps beating just the same." ,

Examine your heart often to see if it is such toward your neighbor as you would like his to be toward you were you in his place. This is the touchstone of true reason.

A pure heart won't get us out of conflict and controversy. It may well be the very thing that gets us into it.

There were earnest longings that all God’s people might be clothed with humility and meekness, like the Lamb of God, and feel nothing in their hearts but love and compassion to all mankind; and great ...

Compassion is expressed in gentleness. When I think of persons I know who model for me the depths of spiritual life, I am struck by their gentleness. Their eyes communicate the residue of solitary bat...

My tradition teaches that no heart is as whole as a broken heart, and I would say that no faith is as solid as a wounded faith.

I am convinced that the scourge of our scientific and technological age is depersonalization. There is a heartbeat pulsating at the center of the universe, giving life and meaning to everything, but o...

Hearts are broken in ten thousand ways, for this is a heart-breaking world; and Christ is good at healing all manner of heart-breaks.

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wo...

A. Parnell Bailey visited an orange grove where an irrigation pump had broken down. The season was unusually dry and some of the trees were beginning to die for lack of water. The man giving the tour ...

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...

In the one place in the Bible where the Son of God pulls back the veil and lets us peer way down into the core of who he is, we are not told that he is “austere and demanding in heart.” We are not tol...

All: Gracious God, we have become callous to those in need, holding back compassion yet unsparing with judgment. We defend our motivations, rather than using all you have given us to love and care for...

Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

Ah, there is nothing more beautiful than the difference between the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a holy being, and the thought about sinful creatures which is natural to a self-r...

What is the solution? I once asked the former head of a major Christian relief and development organization what he had learned in his decades of experience in the field of poverty alleviation. …he sa...

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.