The word advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means coming. Thus Advent is a season in which we are invited to watch and wait for God’s arrival among us - making it a time of intense yearning and deep longing. It is a time filled with hope and anticipation, a time that reflects the 400 years (between the Old and New Testaments) that God’s people waited for ...
Keep ReadingThis inexhaustible love between the Father and the Son includes and yet transcends all forms of love known to us. It includes the love of a father and mother, a brother and sister, a husband and wife, a teacher and friend. But it also goes far beyond the many limited and limiting human experiences of love we know. It is a caring yet demanding love. It is a supportive yet s...
Keep ReadingI know you through and through - I know everything about you. The very hairs on your head I have numbered. Nothing in your life is unimportant to me, I have followed you through the years, and I have always loved you - even in your wanderings. ...
Keep ReadingIn Ephesians, Paul lets us in on a little secret: We’ve been more than noticed. God has pursued us from farther than space and longer ago than time. Our romance is far more ancient than the story of Helen of Troy. God has had us in mind since before the Foundations of the World. He loved us before the beginning of time, has come for us, and now calls us to journey toward...
Keep ReadingThe things we do are not proof of our value, worth, or significance. They are not the measurements by which we try to justify our existence. Instead, the things we do are our expression of love to the God who already loves us more than we dare ask or imagine. They are not a resume. They do not earn us anything. They simply say, “I love you, too.”...
Keep ReadingAren’t you, like me hoping that some person, thing or event will come along to give you that final feeling of inner well-being you desire? Don’t you often hope: “May this book, idea, course, trip, job, country or relationship fulfill my deepest desire.” But as long as you are waiting for that mysterious moment you will go on running helter-skelter, always anxious...
Keep ReadingTheme for the Week: Loved. Let me talk very intimately and very earnestly with you about Him who is dearer than life. Do you really want to live your lives, every moment of your lives, in His presence? Do you long for Him, crave Him? Do you love His presence? Does every drop of blood in your body love Him? Does every breath you draw breathe a prayer, a praise to Him? Do yo...
Keep ReadingTheme for the Week: Loved. We spend most of our lives trying to make things happen for ourselves and for people we love. But life is not reduced to what you give or know or achieve. Nor is it reduced to your mistakes, your failures, or your sin. Life isn’t even defined by whom you love....
Keep ReadingTheme for the Week: Grace. The greatest saints are not those who need less grace, but those who consume the most grace, who indeed are most in need of grace - those who are saturated by grace in every dimension of their being. Grace to them is like breath. ...
Keep ReadingTheme for the Week: Grace. She is not named, but everyone seems to know who she is. In fact, she has quite a reputation in town. It would seem that her reputation has even become her identity. That is until she met Jesus. We’re are not told exactly when or how that happened, but somewhere along the line these two had met before, and it had changed everything about her. N...
Keep ReadingTheme for the Week: Grace. I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. It can be received gladly or grudgingly, in big gulps or in tiny tastes, like a deer at the salt. I gobbled it, licked it, held it down between my little hooves. ...
Keep ReadingTheme for the Week: Grace. God has infinite treasures to give us. Yet a little tangible devotion, which passes away in a moment, satisfies us. How blind we are, since in this way we tie God’s hands, and we stop the abundance of His grace! ...
Keep ReadingThe grace of God says to you and to me, “I can make last place more significant than first place. I will use prostitutes to teach others about gratitude. I will use lepers as examples of cleanliness. I will take men who persecute the church and make them pillars. I will take the dead and give them life....
Keep ReadingGrace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation [unacceptable to a just God]. Its use to us ...
Keep ReadingWe strive for order, coherence, and wholeness in our lives. We want certainty. We long for shalom. Shalom is a peace that not only recalls all the pieces of one’s life but sees how the parts fit together in a unified and glorious whole. Shalom involves rest and gratitude; it provides a balance and harmony where all things seem right....
Keep ReadingThink of Jesus’ words to the disciples, “Peace (shalom) be with you” (John 20:19). Focus on the word peace. It means wholeness and well-being. The presence of the living Christ is speaking and breathing well-being and wholeness in the very center of your fear, your vulnerable place. ...
Keep ReadingThe Christian journey is a journey in wholeness. It is what we might call an adventure in spiritual growth. To talk about spiritual growth, however, is to talk about all of life. Spiritual growth involves not only the way we “pray” but the way we “play.” It is concerned with harmony, the balanced use of life energy in a way that the whole person is nourished by...
Keep ReadingGracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours. You know the misformed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than your high purpose for my life. ...
Keep ReadingShalom, peace, is one of the richest words in the Bible. You can no more define it by looking up its meaning in the dictionary than you can define a person by his social security number. It gathers all aspects of wholeness that result from God’s will being completed in us....
Keep ReadingFew words in all of the Old Testament are as rich as the Hebrew word shalom. As a matter of fact, the translations of this one little word are varied and numerous - trying in vain to capture the fullness of the idea it is meant to communicate. The most common translation we have for the word is peace, but that does not seem to go far enough. Therefore, it is also translate...
Keep Reading“Your faith has saved you,” Jesus said (Luke 7:50). Faith in what? Faith in the divine goodness that is ready to forgive everything and everyone who comes. Faith in the infinite mercy of God which is not concerned with numbers, since it is infinite, but with gratitude and self-surrender. ...
Keep ReadingChristians are used to talking about faith as if it were a possession. We speak of ”having faith,” or sometimes, “keeping faith,” and the last thing we want to do is “lose our faith.” Thus, by holding on to faith we assume that we have another tool with which to pursue our goals in life. The Bible, however, rarely speaks of faith as if it were something...
Keep ReadingFaith is the word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved. Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp....
Keep ReadingThere are two peculiar characteristics of pure faith. It sees God behind all the blessings and imperfect works which tend to conceal Him, and it holds the soul in a state of continued suspense....
Keep ReadingFaith as it ripens turns into an almost insatiable appetite, and the awake lion must prowl for God in places it once feared. - John of the Cross ...
Keep ReadingFaith is a way of seeing. It is a way of opening our eyes to see the world as God sees it. That is the spiritual journey we are taking - a journey to ask God to open our eyes so we may see what is there - spiritual forces of power that are mighty and invincible, but invisible to the human eye. ...
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