relationships and community on Strings Attached

In their book Passing the Plate (Oxford, 2008), Christian Smith and Michael Emerson introduce the phrase “discretionary obligation” as a way to understand the typical American Christian’s approach to ...

Prayer of Adoration Lord, our Lord – How excellent is your name in all the earth. Because of who you are – we praise You. Because of what you’ve done – we thank You. You are a Father to the fathe...

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.

Blessed be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above. Before the throne of God We pour our impassioned prayers; Our fears, our hopes, ...

My husband says my ability to talk is what first attracted him to me. He loved how I could work a room, making the shy ones feel included. I could converse with the college president and yuck it up wi...

“You feeling strong, my friend? Call me elf one more time.”

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard ...

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

Never about, always to.

Scripture scholars contend that the original language of the Beatitudes should not be rendered as "Blessed are the single-hearted" or "Blessed are the peacemakers" or "Blessed...

The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.

Leader: Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience All: bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against an...

Leader: How good and pleasant it is when we live together in unity! People: It is like precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, Leader: Running down on Aaron’s beard, down on the colla...

Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.

God created the world to be a fabric, for everything to be woven together and interdependent. “

"How can anyone] be silly enough to think himself better than other people, because his clothes are made of finer woolen thread than theirs. After all, those fine clothes were once worn by a shee...

We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together exist and forever will recreate one another.

Differences simply act as a yarn of curiosity unraveling until we get to the other side.

There is a lovely disarray that comes with attraction. When you find yourself deeply attracted to someone, you gradually begin to lose your grip on the frames that order your life. Indeed, much of you...

…I put down these memorandums of my affections In honor of tenderness, In honor of all of those who have been Conscripted into the brotherhood Of loss…

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...

In Essentials Unity; In Non-Essentials Liberty; In All Things Charity

Digital connections . . . may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. Our networked life allows us to hide from each other, even as we are tethered to each other.

Nothing unites people as sharing the same affliction.

Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls.

Your torture puts hostility to death Your broken body breaks down every dividing wall Your blood makes us blood What wondrous truth What dazzling grace Bring us near again, Jesus Help us remember an...

In his book The DNA of Relationships counselor Gary Smalley argues from countless hours of research and observation alongside the wisdom of the Bible that we are hardwired for relationship. This i...

When I say “New Testament” or “a theological seminary,” in most cases I can see from their reaction that they immediately and radically reverse their evaluation. From a relatively high place in their ...

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.