perspective on Learning from our Suffering

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

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 ...

Preaching Commentary 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. Whe...

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

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 ...

Context We haven’t been following the story of Luke yet. We’re now jumping into Luke partway through, so it helps to do one of those review clips you see at the beginning of an episode in a TV series...

In a poignant tribute written after his son’s passing in a climbing accident, Nicholas Wolterstorff reflects: When we have overcome absence with phone calls, winglessness with airplanes, summer he...

I believe we all need to reframe our stories, at least parts of them, in order to heal, to discard lies, to move from partial truths to richer, fuller explanations, to see our lives as God sees them.

I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.

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...

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.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are-or as we’re conditioned to see it…we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as the world we se and that the lens itself shapes how ...

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

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...

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

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 ...

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.

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 ...

Preaching Commentary There they are on top of a mountain praying with Jesus. Mount Tabor in lower Galilee? Mount Hermon in the far north of Israel near Syria? Some other mount? No one knows. Sudden...

The marginalized and downtrodden receive special insights. They are the ones who can see the pain and the injustice that are killing the world. It is to these voices that we must turn

Walter Brueggemann writes that the movement of the psalms is from orientation to disorientation and then to new orientation. The psalms give us a language for transformation in desert spaces: we move ...

Helen Keller, the blind-and-deaf woman who made history by learning to overcome her disabilities, was once asked if there was anything worse than being blind. She answered, “Oh yes! There is something...

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...

When we hear the word retreat many of us think of the military use of the word, which refers to the tactic troops use when they are losing too much ground, when they are tired and ineffective, a...

What Determines Happiness?  Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...

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

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

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...

Heavenly Father, We confess that we are not always able to see your handiwork in the people and things around us. We do not always see your image in our neighbors, and we do not always see your creat...