the christian calendar on Decision-Making

When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...

Judgment is at hand, promise of judgment and threat of judgment.... It is the same sort of ambivalence which Christians have been taught to recognize in the season of Advent.

Politicians compete for the highest offices. Business tycoons scramble for a bigger and bigger piece of the pie. Armies march and scientists study and philosophers philosophise and preachers preach an...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the sobering truth of what happens to many leaders when they climb the “ladder of success”: The ground at the foot of the ladde...

In his book, Scary Close , Donald Miller acknowledges that over time he developed a mask, or a persona that kept even those closest to him from experiencing with him. As he began to peel back layers ...

Most of us are under pressure, external and internal, to do everything, be good at everything, be accountable to everyone for everything! It is not so. In the divine economy each of us has a particula...

Christians have no business thinking that the good life consists mainly in not doing bad things. We have no business thinking that to do evil in this world you have to be a Bengal tiger, when, in fact...

We know in­stinctively that Christmas is more than shopping mall Santas, silver bells, and snow-flocked trees, but such things are so entangled with our impressions of Christmas that it’s hard to kn...

When we turn toward Advent, the name on our lips is Emmanuel, God with us . So much in Christian faith relies on what the faithful actually mean when we say that name. Western Christianity has fo...

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Wise and all-knowing God, we confess our knowledge is limited. We don’t know what’s best. We don’t know how to control ourselves. We don’t know how to forgive. We don’t know how to love. And we don’t ...

It is a sprinting, squirting, shoving age.

The season of Epiphany is an invitation to follow Jesus into the ways of gratitude and joy,. We are no longer bound by the dissatisfaction of our consumer culture that tells us to keep striving for mo...

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the ar...

We suffer these things and they fade from memory. But daily, hourly, to give up our own possessions and especially to subordinate our own impulses and wishes to others—these are hard, hard things; and...

God's movement is often abrupt and unsettling rather than predictable and settling.

Ann was a working mother in her 30’s, and one of the millions of women who saw the marshmallow castle on the December cover of a popular women’s magazine. Ann confessed, later, that she felt like a “b...

In the midst of all you are facing Your burdens Your responsibilities Your hustle Hear the invitation “Come to the Table” In the midst of all you are facing Your longing Your ambition Your distractio...

Go now in the Epiphany of God knowing that through the church the manifold wisdom of God is made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose t...

Gracious God, you freely embraced death for us. Every day we choose our own will. We choose not to die to ourselves for you. We take the gift you gave us and squander it. Please give us the courage ...

What a difference! The three kings had only a rumor to go by. But it moved them to make that long journey. The scribes were much better informed, much better versed. They sat and studied the Scripture...

The wise men were experts in the movement of the stars and signs in the heavens. Their inquiry thrusts the provincial village into a cosmic concern. It is not the scientific data they are searching ou...

If you ever find yourself sympathizing with Charles Dickens’ character Ebenezer Scrooge regarding the commercialization of Christmas, you’re not alone—this has been a common complaint for quite some t...

'Twas just two days before Christmas and the reverend was stressing. There's a sermon to write and prayers of confessing... If that's you—we see you. You're definitely not alone, and...

Self-denial means knowing only Christ, and no longer oneself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us… . Self-denial is saying only: He g...

Christmas (a shortened form of "Christ’s mass”) has been an embattled holiday for much of its history— and not just because talking heads on TV like to argue about the “war on Christmas” every ye...

Since failure is our unforgivable sin, we are willing to ignore all forms of deviance in people if they just achieve the success symbols which we worship.

To Lent or Not to Lent As someone who grew up Catholic but who "crossed the Tiber north" in middle school (to Presbyterian land), I've experienced some very different perspectives on wh...

The Strain of Time Time marches forward for all of us, doesn’t it? There are 365 days in the Gregorian calendar. There are 365 days in the Liturgical calendar. While the respective beginnings and en...

The highest offices of the state and church resemble a pyramid whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals-eagles and reptiles.