living on Unknown

It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...

Introduction This text is used in the first week of Advent, but preparing for Jesus' return isn't something for just one time of the year. For a treatment that is more focused on Advent, see ...

God uses the nobodies to show himself to be somebody. God uses the nothings to show himself to be something. And maybe you feel like a nobody, a nothing. My friend, you're the one God's chosen...

The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...

Mary was a nobody who became greater than everybody, simply because God came to her and she responded in the humblest possible way. She reasoned, she doubted, she surrendered, she connected with other...

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

Humble and self-forgetting we must be always, but diffident and apologetic about the gospel never.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by an...

An ancient legend tells of a well-respected rabbi who would vanish from his synagogue for a few hours each Sabbath. His mysterious absences sparked curiosity among his students, who wondered if their ...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

* This story is likely untrue, but a funny anecdote nonetheless It’s difficult sometimes to think we won’t live forever. A wealthy man who had made his fortune and spent many years in New York p...

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wi...

Ask me not where I live or where I like to eat . . . ask me what I am living for and what is keeping me from living fully for that.

Humble. Before Jesus, almost no pagan author had used “humble” as a compliment. Yet the events of Christmas point inescapably to what seems like an oxymoron: a humble God. The God who came to earth ca...

...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we ...

We all live between two worlds. We are planted here on earth while our hope is in heaven. We are given work to do in temporary soil that, we’re told, has the potential to spring up into unending fruit...

The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the divine wonder of living is the root of sin.

Sir Isaac Newton was one of the great scientists of all time. Most men of science today agree that his great book Principia is the greatest scientific book ever written. Yet of his achievemen...

Intellectually we all know that we will die, but we do not really know it in the sense that the knowledge becomes a part of us. We do not really know it in the sense of living as though it were true. ...

Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), who were experiencing social m...

One of the cardinal rules of improvisational theater is that actors must never steal scenes. In her book Improvisation for the Theater , Viola Spolin bluntly puts it this way: “Any player who ‘st...

To accept this [Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the disciples' feet] is to be converted. And nothing can be added to this. If you imagine that you can add something to what is given in the ...

Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) who were experiencing social ma...

For those of us who live in the shadow of self-doubt, who may wonder what meaning a life of relative anonymity may have in a society filled with the cult of celebrity in which likes, reposts, and digi...

In the summer of 1941, Sergeant James Allen Ward was awarded the Victoria Cross for his extraordinary bravery. While flying at 13,000 feet above the Zuider Zee in his Wellington bomber, he climbed out...

Humble Father, we admit to you tonight that our selfishness runs deeper than we know. Even in our service to others, we often expect a reward or result. We really only want to serve others when we see...

It is impossible to conceive how different things would have turned out if that birth had not happened whenever, wherever, however it did ... for millions of people who have lived since, the birth of ...

Risen Jesus, no one saw it coming, but your march out of the tomb has changed everything. This day leaves me breathless in wonder—death is conquered, hope lives, love wins, salvation is here! Give me ...

Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do...