work on Loneliness

The Leader and People pray responsively In peace, we pray to you, Lord God. Silence For all people in their daily life and work; For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are...

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...

The antidote to exhaustion is not rest but wholeheartedness.

This past week I have been at a reunion with college friends (this is the main reason I missed last week's update). It's been significant for a number of reasons. I hope to unpack a few other ...

If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...

Precious Lord, take our hand, Lead us on, help us stand; We’re tired, we’re weak, we’re worn; Thru the storm, thru the night, Lead us on to the light, Take our hand, precious Lord, Lead us home. The o...

The defining problem driving people out is …just how American life works in the 21st century. Contemporary American life simply isn’t set up to promote mutuality, care, or common life. Rather, it is d...

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

In Hillbilly Elegy the author tells of Bob, who worked with him at a tile warehouse with his girlfriend. Bob missed work once a week, was chronically late, and took many breaks each day, lasting ove...

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

Gracious and Heavenly Father, In your word, you call us to be comforted first and foremost by You. But often, if we are honest, we look for comfort in different places. We look for comfort in our b...

In his wonderful book Run with Horses , Eugene Peterson reminds us of many of the ways in which modern life de-personalizes and degrades us. We become a number and not a name. We are valued for wha...

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have r...

Underneath our frantic pace is a question: Is this work I do good enough?

Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. Unless there is God. If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a true...

[D]o you have margin in your life, like the white spaces between these words and the edges of the page? Having margin is about intentionally scheduling white space in your calendar to pray, rest, read...

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

The award-winning and now venerable filmmaker Wim Wenders recently put out a new movie called “Perfect Days.” It was filmed in Japan and follows the daily life of Hirayama, a cleaner of public t...

The other afternoon, in an effort to avoid doing my work, I picked up Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It turned out to be a fitting choice, as Thoreau has quite a bit to say about wasting time. “The cos...

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...

Ancient Lens When Paul writes to the church about struggles between body and spirit, he is not the first to join this discussion. Even if you limit the conversation to just the Mediterranean world,...

Call to Confession The Apostle Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippian church that God is still at work in us. If you feel you’ve made too many mistakes, remember that God will finish the go...

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.

The bottom line is this: never grow complacent. Never grow tired of learning. As soon as we stop learning we lose the capacity to grow and mature in our work and our relationships. This continual lear...

Work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Body versus Spirit When Paul writes to the church in Rome about struggles between body and spirit, he is not the first to join this di...

In his landmark work, Habits of the Heart, the sociologist Robert Bellah describes thee distinct orientations people take with respect to their work. The first orientation is to see your work as a job...

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of ...