strength on Mental Illness

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...

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...

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

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...

John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a nig...

Where there’s humility there is majesty; where there’s weakness, there’s might; where there is death, there’s life. If you want to get these things don’t disdain those.

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...

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

Every weakness contains within itself a strength.

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

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...

When you face the perils of weariness, carelessness, and confusion, don't pray for an easier life. Pray instead to be a stronger man or woman of God.

Dear Heavenly Father, we lower our heads before you and we confess that we have too often forgotten that we are yours. Sometimes we carry on our lives as if there was no God and we fall short of being...

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....

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...

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...

Much as we long for infinities of power and duration, we have no evidence that these lie within our reach, much less within our responsibility. It is more likely that we will have either to live withi...

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...

God of wonder and strength, compassion, grace and love–all of which we see revealed through the power of a storm and its aftermath: You’re so big–and we’re so small. Your might is unlimited–ours is fi...

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...

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...

When we live our lives by the story of unlimitedness, we believe small equals powerless.

Every other religion and philosophy says you have to do something to connect to God; but Christianity says no, Jesus Christ came to do for you what you couldn’t do for yourself. Every other religion s...

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...

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

We beseech You, Master, to be our helper and protector. Save the afflicted among us; have mercy on the lowly; Raise up the fallen; appear to the needy; heal the ungodly; Restore the wanderers of...

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...

I rise today with the power of God to pilot me, God's strength to sustain me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look ahead for me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak fo...

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and ...

If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living...