balance on Expressing Yourself

“I never work better” Martin Luther once said, “than when I am inspired by anger; for when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding ...

In an old joke, people refer to seminary as cemetery. Attending one does feel like that at times, so the last thing I expected to discover in a dingy classroom in the basement of a Pasadena seminary s...

[D]o you have margin in your life, like the white spaces between these words and the edges of the page? Having margin is about intentionally scheduling white space in your calendar to pray, rest, read...

The twenties are a time when one asks, What will I do with my life? What is it that I really want in exchange for my life’s labors? Most denied that the key desire of life was for material wealth; t...

I might not be the best person to be writing this.  After an eleven-year career in business in my twenties and early thirties, I’ve been an ordained pastor now for nearly twenty-seven years. There are...

We talk about our work all the time. It is rare that a conversation with a person we have recently met does not at some point lead to the inevitable question, What do you do? by which we mean, how do ...

John Coltrane stands out as one of the giants of 20th-century jazz. His legacy is a generation of hearts touched and the light of God shining through his songs. Yet, for years, his work was haunted by...

We must offer all our acts to God and believe that He accepts them. Then hold firmly to that position and keep insisting that every act of every hour of the day and night be included in the transactio...

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Albert Camus Two events recently collided in my mind and coalesced into this short essay: The first was a relatively in...

Looking through the lens of Holy Scripture, human work must be seen first and foremost as value contribution, not economic compensation. We can have a flourishing, fruitful life even if we don’t get a...

I have been moved to a different course of action, however, inspired largely by my daily exposure to college students in a great university during the course of a preaching and teaching ministry that ...

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding ways to rest and relax as part of a healthy, balanced life: I once read a book in which the author sa...

In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

...work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental...

Contemporary society assumes that we make a choice: one member of a household will be the “homemaker” and the other the “breadwinner” (i.e., in the marketplace generating income to sustain the home). ...

To live well is to work well.

Whatever you can do with a clean conscience, you can do to the glory of God. No work is so menial that it cannot be rendered as worship.

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.

Next time you’re tempted to complain about your work, praise God for it instead. Next time you open your mouth to gossip about people you work with or smear those you work for, stop yourself and turn ...

Sometimes, of course, the sense of God with us becomes much more distinct. My oldest brother, J. I. Willard, served for over thirty years as a minister under the blessing of God. But his entry into th...

In 1989, the advertising world welcomed a new icon into the world. It was pink, it was furry, it wore sunglasses, and sported a drum-set. Can you picture him? It’s the Energizer bunny. Television scre...

I remember playing a game as a child in which we would bend one knee and grab our foot behind us and then try to race—limping, stumbling and falling over as we struggled across the grass toward a fini...

The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...

Sobriety is the counterweight that must balance out success. Especially if things keep getting better and better.

Gracious God, for many of us, the notion of Sabbath-keeping is foreign. It suggests old-fashioned traditionalism or constrictive legalism. Yet, your example in Genesis 2, not to mention other portions...

Love alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

Life is always dull and insipid to those who have no great works on their hands to do and no lofty ideals to elevate their spirits.