the soul on Trouble

I will bless the Lord at all times;     his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord;      let the afflicted hear and be glad. O magnify the Lord with me,     an...

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside still waters. He revives my soul and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake....

Pastor: “O LORD, rebuke me not in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; heal me, O LORD, for my bones are troubled. All: “My soul also is grea...

Leader: Heavenly Father, I confess that I have sinned against you. I have delighted my soul in other things more than I have in you. Why, then, is it any surprise to me that you feel far off from me? ...

Though God is at work, God hides… You have a choice: see God here or not; see salvation, or see only human courage; see the divine subtly at work, or see chance, luck of the draw on this day of lots.

The journalist Andrew Sullivan has some strong words of advice for the modern church,  If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, p...

All that I ever really needed to know about uncivil language I learned in the fifth grade. At a small Dutch Calvinist school in a New Jersey city, I was playing with other students just before classes...

We can prostitute our very souls in our attempts to be successful. We can sell out, cave in and go morally bankrupt chasing the god of success. Knowing this perilous potential, Jesus himself warns us ...

Jesus–our Lord, Savior, Friend and Companion: To be “in” You is to no longer be strangers to Your Father, or to one another. In You–we are brought near. In You–we are redeemed and forgiven. In You–we ...

Most of us know Mother Teresa for her stalwart ministry to the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. But as with each of us, there is a public side of our lives and a private side. Mother Tere...

The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.

As your Servant Augustine said once long ago, “O Lord, the house of my soul is narrow; enlarge it, that you may enter in. It is ruinous, O repair it! It displeases your sight; I confess it, I know...

Spiritual persons suffer great trials, by reason not so much of the aridities which they suffer, as of the fear which they have of being lost on the road, thinking that all spiritual blessing is over ...

The journey has to feel like night because it leads to the unknown. If Christianity meant mere maintenance, then bewilderment or darkness would spell disaster. But . . . darkness is a condition of the...

The story goes like this: It’s the height of British colonialism. An English traveler lands in Africa, intent on a rapid journey into the jungle. He charters some local porters to carry his supplies. ...

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father. For him it has both charm and fascination. Among his countless children, whom he so greatly loves and whom ...

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , Thomas Kelly describes the inward reality that governs the course of history: Out in front of us is the drama of men and of nations, seethi...

Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...

It is not the things of this world that either occupy the soul or cause it harm, since they enter it not, but rather the will and desire for them.

[Jesus says,] Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your s...

Many of us assume that our spiritual heroes do not have to experience the same inner-wrestling that we do. Mother Teresa, beloved across the world is one such figure we might “assume” didn’t have to d...

Pastor: O Lord, we are in over our heads. So many are the sins that we’ve committed this past week, and they condemn us in your presence. Only because you love us with a never-ending, unbreaking, alwa...

The other enemy of the soul, meaninglessness…chokes out life with equal vigor. Meaninglessness woos us into spending our one shot at life on insignificant and trivial things. If we are not vigilant, w...

In embarking on the journey, we must leave the world of certainty. We must courageously journey to a strange place where there are a lot of risks and much is at stake, a place where there are new prob...

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.

Everything we do is about winning something or measuring one person against another or garnering goods in great quantity, not because we need them but in order that others can’t have them. We make lif...

Several times during the day, but especially in the morning and evening, ask yourself for a moment if you have your soul in your hands or if some passion or fit of anxiety has robbed you of it.... If ...

The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master.

The soul can be difficult to define. The great theologian Karl Barth confessed, “We shall search the Old and New Testaments in vain for a theory of the relation between the soul and body.” Your soul i...