life on Possibilities

Awe encourages us to think of God as a transcendent presence: someone outside and beyond our own small concerns and our own vulnerable lives. Awe opens us up to the possibility of living always on the...

Imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our imagination enables us to leave our routine everyday existence by fantasizing about travel, food, sex, falling in love, or having th...

Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good new...

There was a time when adults were neatly categorized into one of two groups: you were either neurotic or psychotic. Psychotic meant that you were out of touch with reality and afraid; neurotic meant t...

The twenties are a time when one asks, What will I do with my life? What is it that I really want in exchange for my life’s labors? Most denied that the key desire of life was for material wealth; t...

Earlier this month Michelle Yeoh won the Best Actress Academy Award for her work in the film Everything Everywhere All at Once . In her moving acceptance speech, she said, “For all the little boys an...

I’ve heard a lot of sermons during the past 60 years. And I’ve preached a bunch too, well over a 1,000 sermons during my years as a pastor. So, I was surprised when, a couple of weeks ago, I heard som...

Last week I spoke to a retreat of pastors and other church leaders who are working on innovative ways to help their congregants understand and live their vocation in the world. The retreat was part of...

The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given,...

Life does not ask what we want. It presents us with options.

I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike and Claudia, who had recently returned from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. We were sitting in a booth at one of those chai...

The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life: the nudges and disciplines that will shape all our other choices. This is especially tr...

Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer's love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey, when we shall fall into the hands of the ...

The pioneering work of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has been popularized in recent years by the gamut of notable thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and, in this cas...

I preached my first sermon at National Community Church on January 14, 1996. The only thing I remember about that message is my opening illustration. I can’t remember the original source, but I think ...

Life has become a smorgasbord with an endless array of dishes. And more important still, choice is no longer just a state of mind. Choice has become a value, a priority, a right. To be modern is to be...

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered ...

It seems to me… that if it is possible … for human beings to choose to live more and more out of tune with the divine intention, to reflect the image of God less and less, there is nothing to stop the...

Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won th...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A New Kind of Feast A mountain, a gathering of thousands, and a great feast make for a classic ancient worship scene.  Add in the frequency of loca...

jobs concluding, stages finishing, grieving over, grudges over, blaming over, excuses over. O God, grant me your sense of timing. In this season of ...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? A New Kind of Feast A mountain, a gathering of thousands, and a great feast make for a classic ancient worship scene.  Add in the frequency of loca...

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

A number of mature Christians have described the Christian journey as one in which the follower of Jesus experiences different levels of grace.  Let us imagine . . . that there are many rooms in t...

If we could see. If we could read the Letter. If, seated on high, amidst the authors of our destinies. we could read the book of our life. Which is written. Already written, finished. But we shall nev...

We will have to start over, with a different and much older premise: the naturalness and, for creatures of limited intelligence, the necessity of limits.

Ambiguity may keep people up nights, but anyone seeking exquisite simplicity in his or her career ought to look for a non-leadership position. Leaders, by definition, have followers. Followers need di...

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

When we reflect on the life to come, the comparative is really inadequate and the superlative is appropriate. This is why, whenever we are reflecting on the future that awaits us, we can always say, “...