health on Clothing

O God, Giver of all good, and Fountain of all mercies, in whom are all the springs of our life; all glory, thanks and praise be unto thee for thine unfailing goodness; for thy faithfulness which is fr...

The spiritual discipline of honoring the body helps us find our way between the excesses of a culture that glorifies and objectifies the body and the excesses of Christian tradition that have often de...

Material success is no measure of spiritual health. Nor is apparent affluence any criterion of real godliness. And it is well for us that the Shepherd of our souls sees through this exterior and takes...

The more I understand people and their needs, the more I am persuaded that God has uniquely designed the local church to respond to those needs.

Spiritual formation is, in practice, the way of rest for the weary and overloaded, of (Matthew 11:28-30), of cleaning the inside of the cup and the dish (Matthew 23:26), of the good tree that cannot b...

Adapted from Ch 4 of On Getting out of Bed. Why is Existence Good? Living for the sake of living—doing things so that you can continue to efficiently do things—begs the question, Why live? To live...

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

Imagine a doctor’s office where every patient is told, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” If I have a headache, that is great advice, but if my appendix has just burst, I will be dead befo...

No change of job, no increased income, no new home, no new electronic device, or no new spouse is going to make things better inside of you.

By failing to come to grips with how cultural dysfunctions deeply impact the health of the church, our leaders will continue to fail to discern an essential reality concerning the nature of change: Cu...

Gathering information without processing and applying it is counter to how the mind works and how the brain is structured and has a deleterious effect on our mental and physical well-being, creating a...

Far too easily we settle for holiness rather than wholeness, conformity rather than authenticity, becoming spiritual rather than deeply human, fulfillment rather than transformation, and a journey tow...

The Church is not a clean, well-lit place where everything runs smoothly and actions automatically match ideals. It is, in the words of the Gospel, a field of chaff and wheat growing up together and b...

In this short excerpt, the abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass describes the tension between faith in Christ and faith in a form of Christianity willing to enslave an entire race of peopl...

As we begin to awaken fully to the spiritual, social and sexual dimensions of ourselves in God’s presence, we find that they are inseparably intertwined and not to be compartmentalized. In fact, many ...

George Garrett, a novelist and amateur boxer wrote about a transformation that often takes place for fighters who stick with the sport. Throughout their journey to boxing excellence, in which they mus...

In most cases, the existing church culture is from a former era that is only meaningful to those in the church, not those in the community.

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...

Breathing is one of the few body processes that can be regulated both consciously and unconsciously. We cannot intentionally lower our heart rate or willfully regulate our blood pressure, but we can c...

Most people I know who establish new patterns of healthy living do so in community.

One could imagine a comparison between a car’s oil drain plug and its electronic ignition system. One is as low-tech (and unimpressive) as could be, while the other is highly sophisticated. But a car ...

Leader: Creator God, our Source and our Home, we belong to you. All: We praise you, and we gather to worship you and give our lives to you. Living Christ, you establish justice, overthrow the ...

Depression is a thief. A pickpocket. Swiping a memory here and there. An emotion, a plan for the afternoon, part of a conversation. It is a burglar. Leaving behind empty surfaces and containers that u...

During a large part of my childhood my father was in school, so we never really went on a traditional “vacation” until late in my elementary school years. I distinctly remember one of our first trips,...

The story goes about a young man (or woman!) with dreams of growing a small church nestled in rural Oklahoma. Despite his relentless efforts, the church continued to teeter on the edge of extinction a...

Interestingly enough, even secular research indicates that exercise and spirituality go hand in hand. “A biological mechanism is at work,” says William C. Bushell, a Massachusetts Institute of Technol...

Jesus, Lord—because you took on flesh, You know what it’s like to be us. You know what keeps us awake at night, or yanks us out of sleep in the early morning. You know what it’s like to have good days...

We can only experience the true beauty of vulnerability when we're courageous enough to crack open the fractures in our mask and allow the light to shine in.

People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic securit...