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Last week I had the privilege of speaking to Eastern University’s Campolo Scholars – students who are considering a call to parish ministry. I was asked to speak about the role of scripture in shaping Christian community.
What is the role of scripture in shaping our…..
When the pandemic hit us back in March, I saw it not as a punishment God was inflicting on us – history demonstrates that we humans are quite capable of bringing trouble on ourselves – but that the Lord would use this time to teach us something. This has happened on a…..
Photo by Andrew Winkler on Upsplash
By my count, we’ve now accumulated more the fifty days in our current lockdown mode. I’m sure I could easily cite fifty reasons I wish it were over already.
In the forefront lies the recognition that, as someone very cleverly put it, “We’re not all in the same boat; we’re all in the same storm.” We are not suffering equally, and it’s frustrating to feel the limitations of what I can do to be helpful in…..
Sometimes we treat the demolition of our “best-laid” plans with as great a sense of catastrophe as the crashing of a plane.
We tend to protect our designs – the offspring of our minds – with the same level of preciousness as our own children, but usually it’s a mistake that betrays hubris.
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While we readily acknowledge love as the most powerful force in the universe, we often discount the vulnerability of loving.
Who of us has not felt the frustration of loving someone so much, being so sure we know what is best for him or her, and then not being…..
How do we cope with the down times in our lives? Where should we turn when we feel spiritually dry, when nothing in our lives feels productive, and circumstances conspire to discourage us from actions we thought were important?
In short, what can we do when we’re “spiritually” depressed?
It’s in these times that I think the…..
Christianity faces a tall order in explaining God’s forgiveness. On the surface, it just seems too simple. A person can do any evil, and God guarantees a full pardon? Paul anticipates the problem in Romans 6:15 – “So should we sin more that grace may abound? Of course not!”
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We know that God listens but we also know that we can’t make the Lord do something for us. Often when a prayer we say isn’t granted we discover that God helps us nonetheless, in a way we hadn’t expected. But we can’t help wondering …
Do we ever change God’s…..
As Election Day approaches, I find I crave some antidote to the acrimony of this campaign and the unavoidable anxiety it has raised in all of us about its outcome. Thinking about this gnawing sense of apprehension has sent me back to CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. There the mentor…..
Charles Dickens opens David Copperfield with: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
Is this God’s vision of what I called last week – “the greater version of ourselves…..