What we do comes out of who we believe we are.
Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be.
Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful.
Freedom is not having everything we crave, it’s being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.
Because with every action, comment, conversation, we have the choice to invite Heaven or Hell to Earth.
My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.
When you forgive somebody, when you are generous, when you withhold judgment, when you love and when you stand up to injustice, you are, in that moment, bringing heaven to earth.
You’re here, you’re breathing, you are the recipient of an extraordinary act of generosity called life.
The life that you want begins the moment you embrace the life you have because all of it is a miracle.
That may sound a big vague, but what has struck me in city after city is that despite our differences and diversity, there’s a common humanity we all share. In many ways we’re all searching and longing for the same things...
Suffering is traumatic and awful and we get angry and we shake our fists at the heavens and we vent and rage and weep. But in the process we discover a new tomorrow, one we never would have imagined otherwise.
Well, I affirm orthodox Christian faith. I affirm the Nicene Creed. I don’t think I’m doing anything terribly new.
Many people need a new rewiring of their heart and mind.
This breath, and this moment, and this life is a gift and we are all in this together. We all have countless choices every day to close down or stand up straight and open up, and take a big breath and say YES to the gift.
Salvation is the entire universe being brought back into harmony with its maker.
When the female voice is repressed and stifled, the entire community can easily find themselves cut off from the sacred feminine, depriving themselves of the full image of god.
The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and beings that ultimately can’t be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not.
People have a view of a God who is terrible that they can’t even imagine being loving or wanting anything to do with.
Fear wants us to become obsessed with some event or person in the future, a year, a month, even a day. It also wants us to look backwards not at our successes, but our short-comings and our failures. Fear losses it’s grip when we stay in the now.
The vibrant, real historic Christian faith is very wide and leaves lots and lots of room for varying perspectives. It’s very diverse and wide, that’s part of it’s strength, life and vibrancy.