worldview and perspective on Growth

Any experienced gardener has heard of a botanical term called Apical (ah-pick-ul) dominance. In most plants that grow from a central stem, from maple trees to bush peas, whatever branch is at the top ...

Eternal and Glorious God, Your grace calls us toward growth and service in You. Yet today we acknowledge the many times we have forgotten Your mercy and rejected Your love. Forgive us when we sin agai...

Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or the...

Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have t...

Rabbi Jesus, Teacher of teachers, thank you for empowering us to know and grow in wisdom and truth. You challenge us and stretch us and open us. You grant us grace to grow over time. We bless you for ...

Spirituality is that place where the utterly intimate and the vastly infinite meet.

Adjusting for population growth, ten times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from “unipolar” depression, or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than did half a century ...

If one looks at the world scene from a missionary point of view, surely the most striking fact is that, while in great areas of Asia and Africa the church is growing, often growing rapidly, in the lan...

In North America, the fastest-growing segment of the population, categorized according to religious affiliation, are the “nones,” meaning those who are done with formal religious affiliation. This inc...

Some people find themselves stuck in a rut. Without challenge or new opportunities, they begin to sound like Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoons: “Yesterday I was a dog. Today I’m a dog. Tomorrow I’ll p...

The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of fallacies which do us no harm.

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.

Before God can deliver us we must undeceive ourselves.

Other major world religions are still centered in the same general geographic area from which they originated except for Christianity. Even more intriguing, the center of Christian growth continues to...

According to Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk tribe in Northern California and a forest manager, Fire is that which renews life. A lot of people have been conditioned to look at it as a threat and...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit–You know what it’s like to be many and one at the same time. In You, we too are many ... yet one. You’ve made us one body—a single family unified for one purpose; with ...

We all have blind spots. We all have flaws in our personalities, behavior, or work habits that we can’t see, and they block our performance and growth. But others can see them. If we permit them to gi...

The following article was originally written for the author’s denominational newsletter as part of the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. It is meant to provide some insights into t...

Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appear...

Sometimes it is helpful to see what life looks like on the other side of faith, that is, for those who believe that God does not exist. Bertrand Russell, the renowned philosopher and avowed atheist, h...

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.

Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...

We are exploring together. We are cultivating a garden together, backs to the sun. The question is a hoe in our hands and we are digging beneath the hard and crusty surface to the rich humus of our li...

The paradox of prosperity is that while living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family, and life satisfaction haven’t budged. That’s why more people—liberated by prosperity...

God’s garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work. History without gardens would be a wasteland. What th...

I suspect that this is the most important thing I’ve said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It’s a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is importa...

What are we hear for in the first place? The fundamental answer…is that we we’re “here for” is to become genuine human beings, reflecting the God in whose image we’re made, and doing so in worship on ...