idolatry on Emptiness

Joy’s trick is to supply  Dry lips with what can cool and slake,  Leaving them dumbstruck also with an  ache Nothing can satisfy.

Pastor: In the beginning God created all things People: and God saw that they were good. Pastor: God created Adam and Eve in His image, to be in relationship with Him. When confronte...

There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he ...

In The Phantom Tollbooth , there is a special kind of food called “subtraction stew.” Produced by a mathemagician, this stew makes you hungrier after you’ve eaten it. Our three main characters don’t ...

Humanity is thirsty for God, but we drink from cups that can hold no water. We draw well water and find that we are thirstier after we drink our fill. It is the water of self-hatred and rejection. It ...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

Every prayerless day is a statement by a helpless individual, ‘I do not need God today.’ Failing to pray reflects idolatry – a trust in substitutes for God. We rely on our money instead of God’s provi...

A possession ought to belong to the possessor, not the possessor to the possession.

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

All: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breat...

Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ...

A Practice of Silent Prayer Recently, I’ve restarted my daily practice of silent prayer. Like many who try this practice, I feel an immense amount of resistance arising within me against my intention...

Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.

Idols are dangerous when a worshiper, having lost patience in God, transfers his hope and joy into a deity represented by a handmade thing and cries to it: “Awake and arise!” In this move, human antic...

In Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City she entered a life of club hopping and se...

Nothing enslaves more than that which we think we cannot live without.

Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry.

The ultimate reason for our misery, however, is that we do not love God supremely. As Augustine so famously put it in prayer, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they fin...

Failure is a gift. When we are forced to drink the dust of our idols, we can begin to turn our sights toward home.

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

Lord Almighty, you alone are worthy of our praise. Yet we worship idols. We place our desires, passions, and ambitions in a more prominent position than we place you. We fail to serve you alone. We fa...

Almighty God, during this tumultuous time, we see so clearly our frailty and powerlessness. Any illusions of strength and grandeur have been stripped away. We are utterly dependent upon you. Even with...

Great needs grow from great possessions.

Eternal and Glorious God, You are merciful, kind, and forgiving. You hear us when we confess to You. We admit we do not focus on You with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. A day devoted to Yo...

This prayer also works well for the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18) Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner. I have failed to love as You Love I have treated others as objects and...

We are complicit and we do not even realize it, O Holy God. Every day we participate in systems of idolatry, and we promote the captivity of a nation to gods. We have bought the subtle lies of our cul...

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Which Interpretative Lens Should You Use? I have a general rule of thumb when studying a text. If I can read the early...

If we must “feel” God’s presence before we believe he is with us, we again reduce God to our ability to grasp him, making him an idol instead of acknowledging him as God.”

Many Israelites Had Leprosy, but Naaman Was Healed As we go from mountains to fresh water, we go from Elijah to Elisha.  Despite having a double dose of Elijah’s power and a fraction of his hair, Eli...