problems on Dialogue

I love golf. If only it loved me in return. Alas, it is a one-sided romance. My golf swing is the stuff that keeps an instructor awake at night. One kindly compared it to an octopus falling from a tre...

If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...

Lucy says to Charlie Brown: ‘You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?’ ‘No; and I don’t want to know! Leave me alone!’ ‘The whole trouble with you is you won’t listen to w...

I am struck by all the things Jesus didn’t say or do in response to the litanies of pain and defensiveness he heard from people. Jesus didn’t say to the man, “You sound like a victim to me; what are y...

Pastor: Lord, we confess that too often we don’t live as people filled with the light of eternity. People: We complain. We focus on the problems we face and not the blessings you give. Pastor: W...

In times of struggle and failure, we need to do more than pronounce judgment on what's wrong and enforce punishment. We need to talk, discuss, question, evaluate, engage, and interact with our tee...

One of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and powe...

Do not fear the conflict, and do not flee from it; where there is no struggle, there is no virtue.

Robert C. McFarlane was a well-known businessman in the Los Angeles area. He had moved to California from Oklahoma in 1970, and within just a few days of his arrival—due to a disastrous misunderstandi...

Preaching Commentary Besieged from All Angles The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Jar...

Spirit of the Living God—Fall afresh on us this day. Spirit of God present and powerful, Spirit of God fruitful and faithful, Spirit of God filling and fulfilling us as children of the Father and foll...

[I] know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems....

In our modern materialistic world, it is easy to lose sight of that sense of longing. In her wonderful collection of essays Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard speaks about that growing void...

The Psalmist draws us into prayer saying: Come and hear, all you who honor God and let me tell you what he has done for me. I cried out to him and God has surely listened and heard my prayer. Praise ...

Occasionally we talk about our Christianity as something that solves problems, and there is a sense in which it does. Long before it does so, however, it increases both the number and the intensity of...

Notes on the Passage Besieged from All Angles:  The context of this passage is best summed up with the words recorded throughout the letter: Trouble, Distress, Suffering, Hardship, Death at work, Ja...

Let us thank God that he makes us live among the present problems…It is no longer permitted to present problems.... It is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre.

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...

Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.

“What is wrong with the world today?” a Times newspaper editorial once asked. G. K. Chesterton wrote in reply, “Dear sirs, I am. Yours faithfully, G.K. Chesterton.”

If you think of a problem as being like a medieval walled city, then a lot of people will attack it head-on, like a battering ram. They will storm the gates and try to smash through the defenses with ...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Historical Background In our modern world we know so much about our universe that it is easy to forget that in the Bible there is a connection between ...

Preaching Commentary The Danger of Familiarity Occasionally familiarity, paradoxically, turns into an enemy of understanding, or at least becomes an obstruction. Psalm 23, perhaps the most loved ps...

Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

A Story from the Philokalia A story is told in  The Philokalia  about a young monk who went to an older monk to confess a struggle. The older monk was appalled, telling the young monk that his strugg...

The Danger of Familiarity Occasionally familiarity, paradoxically, turns into an enemy of understanding, or at least becomes an obstruction. Psalm 23, perhaps the most loved psalm of the entire Psalt...

A good problem is something you don't know how to solve. That's what makes it a good puzzle and a good opportunity.”

The best way out is always through.

I long to put the experience of fifty years at once into your young lives, to give you at once the key to that treasure chamber every gem of which has cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you ...

Often, though, people carry around the belief that the majority of their problems are circumstantial or situational—which is to say, external. And if the problems are caused by everyone and everything...