In his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller tells the following story:
Andrew Delbanco is a humanities professor at Columbia University. Some years ago he was doing research on Alcoholics Anonymous and was attending AA meetings around the country. One Saturday morning in a New York City church basement he was listening to a “crisply [...]
“LOVED X 3″ was the theme of the retreat, and looking back on it, I see that we were. It felt messy to me as I was going through it: so many of us, and all so different; so many hopes and so many wounds. But of course! That’s the point, isn’t it. (Papa laughs and [...]
During yesterday’s sermon I talked about the opportunity the homosexuality “issue” affords us to reflect upon key Christian concepts like salvation, grace, repentance, love and judgment. Because of our sometimes narrow and even distorted understanding of these words, we may be ill-equipped to think about, much less talk about a complex issue like homosexuality.
Take the [...]
Last night, after sharing a meal with our Alpha participants, I attended the second of four dialogue sessions on homosexuality. A couple of years ago the General Synod of the Reformed Church in America mandated that dialogue sessions around this issue occur throughout the denomination before the matter is allowed to be discussed again in 2009. [...]
The Lord’s Prayer has been a magnet for my spiritual life for many years. There was a time when I was “into” all sorts of fringe spiritual stuff — Jungian psychology, New Age healing practices, exploring other religions, the daily use of runes — you name it. Fortunately, I retained enough of a connection to [...]
After worship yesterday someone asked if I would send her the prayer of confession that we had on the screen. I thought I would include it here.
I’m seeing that it’s God’s grace as much as his distaste that causes him to oppose our pride. He sees how destructive and life-depleting pride is. And now that we’ve [...]
I’m going to end this series of posts about friendship with Jesus by saying a word about suffering. While “suffering” may seem too big a word to include many of the relatively minor hassles and irritants in our lives, even these lesser interruptions can be unrelenting and disruptive enough to make our days depressing and our relationship with [...]
I’d like you to pay attention to something today.
Everything.
Bill Donahue, in his book, In the Company of Jesus, tells the following experience he had in a seventh-grade science class:
One of the things we look for in a friend is someone who will accept us as we are and love us no matter what. Is Jesus that kind of friend? Does he really love us or is he just putting up with us? Does he seem distant a lot of the time because he’s [...]
God talks to his friends. God called Abraham his friend (II Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23), and talked to him. Moses was also a friend of God, and God talked to him: ”The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Apparently, if we want to “hear” [...]
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