creation human on Instruments of God's Love

The only reason God would have had for creating us was not to get the cosmic love and joy of relationship (because he already had that) but to share it.

Our lives are meant to inspire with (or inhale) the breath of God, the glory of his presence, the brilliance and beauty of his creation, and to expire (or exhale) an echo of wonder—an “amen.” It shoul...

Good God, We have a lot going on. You are a God of grace, And we are made in your likeness. Let us then be people of grace. Meet our human concerns with the fruit of your Spirit: Love for ourselves...

You have wonderfully created us, O God, and yet more wonderfully restored the dignity of human nature. Allow us to share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesu...

Order of Service Greet those gathered and invite them to make a circle with their animals. This is designed as a responsive service between the leader and people, but the reading and prayers could ...

PRAYER OF CONFESSION Pastor: We join with all of creation to shout the praise of Almighty God, and to sing our Alleluias to the one who has conquered death. Yet we must confess to God and one anothe...

Pastor: Heavenly Father – because we are Your creation, You have chosen not to abandon us to sin and death but to rescue us– and it cost the life of Your Son, Jesus Christ, so that we might live wit...

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves ...

Every creator, from a child with Play-Doh to Michelangelo, learns that creation involves a kind of self-limiting. You produce something that did not exist before, yes, but only by ruling out other opt...

God made wheat. We make bread! God made grapes. We make wine. Wheat is good. Bread is very good! Grapes are good, but wine—that is very good.

South of where I live by just over an hour is Henry Cowell State Park. The park features redwood trees that are upward of 1,600 years old. For some perspective, only seven nations on earth are older t...

God created man for nothing else but happiness.

Self-made and self-sufficient people live in a fantasy world, empty of the reality of God. In contrast, the poor in spirit are deeply aware of being God-made and God-sufficient:

It's easy to attack and destroy an act of creation. It's a lot more difficult to perform one.

It was Saint Thomas Aquinas who coined the Latin phrase anima forma corporis , which means “the soul is the form of the body.” The soul, as I said previously, is defined as the first principle of...

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create.

Children, in particular, are driven to create—if we just nudge them in that direction. They thrive in a world stocked with raw materials. But too often, and with the best of intentions, we fill their ...

Franklin D. Roosevelt had hoped the Yalta conference (which discussed the future of Europe and Germany post-WWII) wouldn’t last more than five or six days. Winston Churchill, however, remarked, “I do ...

Power is the ability to make something of the world.

Culture is what we make of the world. Culture is, first of all, the name for our relentless, restless human effort to take the world as it’s given to us and make something else.