perspective on Impatience

Holy One, grant me Patience in the waiting Raise in me   Steadfastness Resilience Persevering Make me a child of hope and becoming New life takes time to root and grow and bear fruit It takes trus...

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Often we become apathetic in our lives until we face a severe storm. Whether loss of a job, health crisis, loss of a loved one, or financial struggle; God often brings storms into our lives to change ...

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Pragmatism may be defined simply as the approach to reality that defines truth as “that which works.” The pragmatist is concerned about results, and the results determine the truth. The problem with t...

If a man have Christ in his heart, heaven before his eyes, and only as much of temporal blessing as is just needful to carry him safely through life, then pain and sorrow have little to shoot at.

If you can’t get out of it, get into it.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.

Loving and Merciful God, we come before you today aware of our own selfish pride. We have chosen our way above your way. We have chosen our opinions over the unity of your church. Forgive us where we ...

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.

A man who was fishing one day noticed that the fisherman next to him threw the big fish he caught back into the water, while keeping the small ones. This went on all day until the first man couldn’t h...

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.

Men box God into the contents of personal experiences, and then seek to define his attributes by this limited exposure to eternity.

Lesslie Newbigin, the great missiologist and missionary, shares a powerful analogy of repentance from his days serving as a missionary in India. I remember once visiting a village in the Madras di...

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore.

Parker Palmer’s book Let Your Life Speak arrested my heart a few years back. It begins with a poem by William Stafford, “Ask Me”, that begs this question: “Some time when the river is ice ask me mista...

Context If you're jumping into Luke partway through the story, it helps to do one of those "Previously On..." clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series. The most impo...

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 ...

If you let your circumstances define the way you see God, you are a prisoner of perspective. Or worse, a prisoner of your past mistakes! But if you let God define the way you see your circumstances, y...

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. . . . We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiah...

One of my favorite sayings is, no matter how difficult it is to hear, “Reality is always your friend.”

While serving as British Prime Minister, Lloyd George had to deal with World War I, an economic depression, and the Sinn Fein movement attempting to effect Irish liberation, as well as many other smal...

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who famously left his renowned practice in Switzerland to become a medical missionary in Africa, was hosting a group of European visitors at his hospital in Lambarene, French Eq...

Some years ago our pastor told an unusual story about a Southern plantation owner who left a $50,000 inheritance to a former slave who had served him faithfully all his life. That was quite a sum of m...

All looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.

Please Aslan, said Polly, could you say something to – to unfrighten him? . . . I cannot tell that to this old sinner, and I cannot comfort him either, he has made himself unable to hear my voice. If...

Eternal and Beautiful God, The One who births us and names us Grant us perspective A holy centering of truth, humility, and our belovedness Not too high that we fall away from you our need of you our...

A Letter from Exile To understand this section of Revelation, we have to remember that it was written by someone in exile to communities who were suffering for their faith. When we read Revelation 2-...

It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan ...