strength on Family Dysfunction

Jesus–our Lord, Savior and Friend: Come into our hearts to save us and to rule. Come into your Church to direct and empower us with Your Gospel and Your Spirit. Come into your World to redeem the Lost...

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short tim...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

I have a photo of one of my children: on a day of pure sunshine, he is running down the hillside, leading with his chest, his smile and stride wide as his speed picks up. Running is pure delight. Agai...

Weak and needy people finding their hope in Christ's grace are what mark a mature relationship. The most dangerous aspect of your relationships is not your weakness, but your delusions of strength...

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power thro...

We long to see our lives whole, to know that they matter. We wonder whether our many activities might ever come together in a way of life that is good for ourselves and others. Lacking a vision of a l...

Bullying has been around as long as children have lived in groups. Often, adults minimize or ignore it, reasoning: "we all have to go through it—I did, and I'm ok" or even "it build...

The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.

Every weakness contains within itself a strength.

A few weeks ago, when I was out surfing, there was no one else in the water. In fact, there was no one around at all, except a guy the size of Goliath doing tae kwon do on the beach. After I’d been ou...

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

Success is a shining city, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We dream of it as children, we strive for it through our adult lives, and we suffer melancholy in old age if we have not reached it....

Recently a professor shared with me a college student’s reflections in response to my earlier writings on solitude and silence:  I was not born into a world relatively unaffected by technology lik...

One Sunday morning a number of years ago my wife piled the children into the family car to come to Sunday school and worship. When she turned the switch to start, the engine wouldn't even grunt. T...

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

We confess, loving God, that all too often we do not open our lives to the power of your Holy Spirit. We tend to ignore the Spirit rather than call on its fire to burn within us and strengthen us for ...

I was listening to a show on the National Geographic channel. Two deep-sea diving experts were discussing the physics of a submarine. I found it fascinating that every square inch of a submarine’s hul...

As we depart,  Both individually and collectively  Be who you are called to be. In any and in all the ways you can Seek justice.  Resist evil.  Stand strong against Death.  And all Death’s works and w...

Resilience is not something that can be mustered in a moment of “rising to the occasion.” It is formed over a long period before the crisis of testing so that it can continue the transformation during...

Most leaders focus on how to succeed in a task. A far better approach is to focus on who you are.

Father—you know us like no-one else; and ...You love us like no-one else. Thank You for your manifold gifts. For the gift of life—we thank You. For the gift of each new day—we thank You. For the gift ...

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

Consider the banyan tree, a remarkable species found in India and other subtropical regions. As it grows, its sprawling branches become increasingly heavy. But instead of breaking under their own weig...

Pastor: Oh Lord our God, we have forgotten who you are and what you have done for us. Your great and miraculous works for us are lost in the recesses of our minds, and we could not care less about you...

The strongest people in my life are the ones who know how to win battles behind closed doors that no one knows about. They know how to rise above the hard and pursue the holy. And they know bad days d...

Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead.

There is a strength, a power even, in understanding brokenness, because embracing our brokenness creates a need and desire for mercy, and perhaps a corresponding need to show mercy. When you experienc...

Lord–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Thank You that there’s no place we can hide from Your Spirit, no place we can flee from Your presence. We can’t go beyond the reach of Your love, nor out-distance the...

Burnout is the disease of our age. Time magazine had an editorial way back in the 1980s about “the burnout of just about everybody.” I concluded that the metaphor of burnout was not quite right, parti...