desire on Light

Almighty and Everlasting God, who are the brightness of faithful souls and the desire of all nations; so fill the world with your glory and show yourself by the radiance of your light that all the peo...

Leader: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? People: One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after...

Trust in the Lord, and do good. Dwell in the land, and enjoy safe pasture. Also delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust also i...

Dear God, my Heavenly Father, My heart is unclean, but you can purify it. My heart is full of darkness, but you can illuminate it. My heart is sad, but you can comfort it. My heart is wicked, but ...

Pastor: Let us pray to the God who has given us the light of day and the Light of eternal life through Jesus Christ, His Son. Lord, make the beauty of Your Light shine brightly on us so that it m...

Holy God, You call us to a passionate, all-consuming faith. Yet, so frequently, we give You half-hearted obedience or distracted, leftover moments of our time. You tell us that we are the salt of the ...

Preaching Commentary Stop!!!  Do not read further until you have ordered and read Tim Keller’s brief yet very significant book, The Prodigal God: Rediscovering the Heart of the Christian Faith . ...

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Our lectionary text can be fairly easily broken into two major sections, with verses 29-34 concerned with John the Baptist testifying to Jesus’ ministry and...

While the search for the divine has been somewhat crowded out in modern times by our busy and overstimulated lives, it is still one of the most universal of human strivings. C. S. Lewis describes this...

Excursus on Ash Wednesday The Meaning of Ashes Ashes represent many things. The heaped up ashes in a hearth may indicate the benefit of warmth on a cold winter’s night. The charred remains of a per...

Regarding Ash Wednesday Note: This passage appeared as part of the lectionary for Ash Wednesday. It starts with the gospel passage for that day, but   attends to the other passages and themes, so it...

Stop!!!  Do not read further until you have ordered and read Tim Keller’s brief yet very significant book, The Prodigal God: Rediscovering the Heart of the Christian Faith .  Hopefully you are alre...

Intro These are incredibly rich texts. This guide recommends taking a detour through salvation history to put them in their right context. This helps your congregation expand their understanding of ...

Intro These are incredibly rich texts. This guide recommends taking a detour through salvation history to put them in their right context. This helps your congregation expand their understanding of ...

Summary of the Text Our lectionary text can be fairly easily broken into two major sections, with verses 29-34 concerned with John the Baptist testifying to Jesus’ ministry and verses 35-42 dealing w...

In 1998, Nick Cave*, an Australian rock/pop artist, was asked by the Vienna Poetry Academy to give a series of talks on the nature of song-writing. A year later he gave a slightly revised version of t...

My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignora...

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves; we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.

In her engaging treatment, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes both the beauty and pain of seeing our own sinful nature: It is often true that once we are made to see, we don’t like w...

There is an energy within all of us that haunts us and can either lead us to set out on a quest for something more or can frustrate us by making us nostalgic for what we do not have.

[The] soul went forth (being led by God) for love of Him alone, enkindled in love of Him, upon a dark night, which is the privation and purgation of all its sensual desires, with respect to all outwar...

A large part of what it means to be human is to be one who longs after things. Sometimes, we have trouble putting into words the longings inside us. Take for example these words from Anne Frank, just ...

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

We want to do a lot of stuff. We’re not in great shape. We didn’t get a good night’s sleep. We’re a little depressed. Coffee solves all these problems in one delightful little cup.

What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies.

The reason we are not able to see God is the faintness of our desire.

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to r...

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...

Because we are fundamentally desiring creatures. We are what we love, and our love is shaped, primed, and aimed by liturgical practices that take hold of our gut and aim our heart to certain ends. So ...