choices on Suffering

Almighty and loving God, all of us here today are hurting. Some of us are hurting as the result of circumstances beyond our control. Some of us are hurting because of our own choices. Some of us are f...

How do you define what it means to “make a sacrifice?” We say we sacrifice for our family, or sacrifice for our careers. We speak of Jesus sacrificing himself so that we can experience eternal life. A...

Almighty and gracious God, Your love is everlasting and filled with patience. In our sinfulness, we run away, yet You seek after us. We make foolish choices in spite of the fact that You teach us a be...

Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of modern psychology, wrote this from his years of experience as a therapist: The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of ...

Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms...

All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened...

God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: You are always and forever for us: We can’t run away from Your presence; nor out-sin Your amazing grace and forgiveness. We can’t exhaust Your unconditional love nor ...

Gracious God, your Son Jesus came not be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. He is our Good Shepherd, whose leadership is less about the love of power, and more about the ...

Doubt is really the felt tension that exists between a belief you have and a contrary claim you do not yet believe…Simply put, doubt is that experience of one of our beliefs seeming like it might be f...

Pastor: Gracious Father, You have chosen us for a purpose – that we might bear lasting fruit for Your Kingdom. You call us to walk humbly before You and to share in the struggle with the least of thes...

The way we are living, timorous or bold, will have been our life.

Choices will continually be necessary and -- let us not forget -- possible. Obedience to God is always possible. It is a deadly error to fall into the notion that when feelings are extremely strong we...

We have the freedom to make choices that can lead to blessing and favor or painful consequences. Battling busyness requires me to take a look inside my heart to make sure that my choices align with my...

One of the saddest, most depressing movies I’ve ever seen would have to be Sophie’s Choice. I was a kid when it came out, so I didn’t see it until much later, after I was grown. By that time, I had he...

One of the saddest, most depressing movies I’ve ever seen would have to be Sophie’s Choice. I was a kid when it came out, so I didn’t see it until much later, after I was grown. By that time, I had he...

Sometimes the circumstances at hand force us to be braver than we actually are, and so we knock on doors and ask for assistance. Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than w...

Holy Comforter, You are near when my dream dies. You are near the brokenhearted. Thanks be to you for a new dream and a future beyond my imagining. Maker of Miracle, You are near when I cannot see yo...

O God, who guides the decisions of the meek, and whose light shines in darkness for the godly: Give us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us do, that the Spirit...

It is always easier for us to want to purify other people, and attempt a moral reformation among our neighbors. (Yet) how much have I helped to make her what she is?

“You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we too often center our lives around ourselves and our immediate needs, and that this blinds us from being aware of the needs of our neighbors. Help us to know our tru...

In The Sickness unto Death , Kierkegaard describes a “moment” familiar to all of us. It is the “little tiny transition from having understood to doing.” Here’s what he says about it: …if a person d...

William James, in a famous letter to H. G. Wells in 1906, credited what he called American “moral flabbiness” to “the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess Success. That—with the squalid cash interpr...

Pastor: See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways,...

The choice is before us: life or death. Let us choose life so that we may live. To Jesus we cry: Cleanse us, oh Lord! By the mercy of Christ we are made clean. This is the hope that we proclai...

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...

“It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Gracious God, sometimes I think that I can figure out all the consequences of my decisions. I can become overly impressed with what I perceive to be my strategic vision and analysis. Forgive me for my...

We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.