vulnerability on Fullness of Life

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control o...

Lent 2021: A 40-day Heart Restoration Destruction No More Bonus Content: Video prep session with Scott Bullock on Genesis 9:8-17 . Password: fHUk*p2* AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we ...

Life is precious. Not because it is unchangeable, like a diamond, but because it is vulnerable, like a little bird. To love life means to love its vulnerability, asking for care, attention, guidance, ...

When we see how God is able to show his power in our weakness, not in spite of our weakness but because of it, we are no longer ashamed or afraid. When we see the expansive task at hand and instead of...

O Come, O Come Emmanuel You who are flesh Vulnerable and Lowly and Small Come, O Come Emmanuel You who are Great Holy and Powerful and Forever Come, O Come Emmanuel The Fullness of God with us Make ...

As Europe plunged ever deeper into a second world war, the British poet W.H. Auden composed a poem (“September 1, 1939”) that peels back our human tendency to cover up all fear and uncertainty with se...

Your Inner Life Matters While I have long recognized the significance of a pastor’s inner life, I hadn’t pondered the relationship between our inner life and the act of preaching until recently. Our ...

Leader: We are people of the resurrection. Witnesses to God’s glorious victory in Jesus Christ, which brings peace and transforms the power structures of this world. But we also know that we live in ...

Above all is the centrality of love at the heart of vulnerable faith. Vulnerability will thrive only where love abounds—a love that is generous, gracious, patient, compassionate, humble, curious, joyf...

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Holy Trinity, Community of Love, Draw us together in your creative light Root us in the ground of your being, Vulnerable before one another, Unashamed in your presence and each other’s Make us joyfu...

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? How did we get here? When relationships disintegrate and fall apart it is a fair question to ask. The question may come on the brink of...

The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk, which is the possibility of loss—the chance that when we act, we will lose something we value. Risk, like life, is always about probabilities...

Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging an...

C.S. Lewis indicated that if he wanted something easy and pain-free, he would have chosen a bottle of wine over Jesus. There is no question that biblical love leaves us more vulnerable. But this will ...

We don’t believe our ability to bless others might result from our poverty. Our need might be the thing that most blesses the body of Christ.

I was teaching an English class in a high-rise apartment complex full of low-income families in Minneapolis—mostly immigrant and refugees from East Africa. The tenants’ association paid for me to come...

Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.

“I’ve made myself vulnerable I’ve let myself care. I’ve opened my firmly closed heart. My safety is gone It’s no longer there My protection is falling apart. Nobody promised Our hearts would be safe O...

Sleep reminds us of our helplessness. Asleep, we have nothing to commend us; we accomplish nothing to put on our resume. Because of this, sleep is a counter-formative practice that reminds us that our...

It is my belief that we’re currently in the middle of a cultural overdose on authenticity—but without that necessary companion of vulnerability. I love that we’re all being so authentic and genuine. B...

Many people are broken and without hope. It’s not surprising that a Brooking’s report in October 2019 noted how “deaths of despair” were affecting many sectors of society, particularly in America’s he...

Introduction Psalm 121 is the second in a collection of Psalms referred to as the Psalms of Ascent. Scholars surmise that these Psalms were likely read or sung as pilgrims made their way “up” to Jer...

The mystery I wish to explore…is this: vulnerability as the condition, the enabling condition, for covenant relationship with God…Vulnerability, the capacity to be wounded—what does that mean for us w...

Let him into the mire and muck of our world. For only if we let him in can he pull us out.

The pyschologist Carl Rogers, a person who would know quite well the interior lives of others, has this to say of our inmost thoughts: I have most invariably found that the very feeling which has see...

The “gift of tears” written about by the desert elders and several centuries later by St. Ignatius of Loyola are not about finding meaning in our pain and suffering. They do not give answers but inste...

What we know matters, but who we are matters more. Being rather than knowing requires showing up and letting ourselves be seen. It requires us to dare greatly, to be vulnerable.

I have—found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in ma...

This liturgical reading could begin or close your Palm Sunday processions. While written for one reader, there is the option of adding congregational responses, such as giving the shouts of Hosann...