service on Isolation

Lord of families, tribes, peoples, nations and all the world: it’s for freedom You’ve set us free from sin, guilt, and judgment; free to do what is right and just, what is compassionate, gracious and ...

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

You cannot be lonely if you help the lonely.

The fact that our works are done in the service of God is not enough, by itself, to prevent us from losing our interior life if we let them devour all our time and all our strength. Work is good and n...

If you wait until all of your own issues are gone before helping others, it will never happen. This is a trap that millions have fallen into, not realizing that our own sanctification happens as we mi...

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make t...

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing...

We cannot prioritize our doing before being, our assignment before healing, our service before freedom.

Service is just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, unremitting, persevering, compassionate type of activity.

Being free means “being free for the other, because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free.

The man who is wise, therefore, will see his life as more like a reservoir than a canal. The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water till it is filled, then di...

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...

When your burden is heaviest, you can always lighten a little some other burden. At the times when you cannot see God, there is still open to you this sacred possibility, to show God; for it is the lo...

We must serve God, everyone in his own way, wearing either a leather apron or an academic gown—it does not make any difference. Everyone has to serve God, wearing rubber boots or carrying a gasoline c...

Different Levels of Maturity? There is an interesting dynamic I have noticed that often occurs as people begin to mature into adults. In my life it was a stage that took place following high school, ...

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, the characters of Boromir and Frodo illustrate well the dichotomy between exaltation and service.  As a mighty warrior and heir-apparent to be the leader his...

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 ...

The Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book The Home We Build Together , points out to the reader that in scripture the description of the creation of the universe in Genesis is given a mere thirty-fou...

Self-righteous service comes through human effort. True service comes from a relationship with the divine Other deep inside. Self-righteous service is impressed with the "big deal." True ser...

Never worry about numbers. Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you.

We are not called to help people. We are called to follow Jesus, in whose service we learn who we are and how we are to help and be helped.

Sometimes service means doing routine tasks even if we could have someone else do them. There is a story about Abraham Lincoln – possibly apocryphal but certainly in character – that a cabinet member ...

At this point in the Gospel we move out of the streets into the quiet of a room. “The noise of the cosmos has died away: the stillness of night prevails” (Bultmann). And yet, in [that] quiet room, Jes...

A Highly Practical Text Often we come to scripture passages that require a bit of interpretive twists and turns to find ways of connecting the text to our modern-day lives in the 21st century. But oc...

In his book, The Enormous Exception, Earl Palmer tells about a pre-med undergrad at the University of California, Berkley, who became a Christian after a long journey through doubts and questions. A b...

Reflection We all are aware of cultures that have a hierarchy—a pecking order. The elite and the hoi polloi. The acceptable and the unacceptable. In such cultures, the hierarchy determines the role. ...

Community service has become a patch for morality. You can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck.

Lord Almighty, you alone are worthy of our praise. Yet we worship idols. We place our desires, passions, and ambitions in a more prominent position than we place you. We fail to serve you alone. We fa...

This guide has been updated and expanded. Our Maundy Thursday guide for 2026 on John 13 incorporates this material along with additional commentary, illustrations, and discussion questions. Check ...

A passage often referred to in order to describe the sacrificial, countercultural quality of the early church comes to us interestingly enough, from one of its strongest critics, known later to histor...