"This is the great message of the Christian faith: that God loves us and that nothing can separate us from this love. You don't need to earn it. There is nothing you can do to stop it. There is nothing you need to do to receive it, save accept it as the free gift it […]

Currently, my soul is forcing a slowdown that I am helpless to alter. I don't want to hurry anymore. I have hurried most of my life. I am weary of hurrying. Hurrying is over-rated. Hurrying makes me act in ways I don't love or admire. Hurrying causes me to miss my life. Hurrying keeps me […]

“When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am trusting and suspicious. I am honest and I still play games. Aristotle said […]

If I had one theme I could preach until the day I die it would be grace. Grace sneaks its way into almost every sermon I've ever written, probably because the longer I live, the more I understand how desperately I need grace. I disappoint myself and others far too often to not believe in […]

It's a late summer day, the air is sweltering, silent, still -- but you take your almost-one-year-old puppy for a walk anyway, for she is a tad stir-crazy due to the rain. Nothing much happens on your walk. You're a little bored. Blah, blah, blah, just another day. Yet, when you walk back up your […]

Hope sits in my kitchen; a sturdy farm table, confident that even with all her dings, dents and defects, joy might get served for breakfast. Laughable? Yes. Yet when loneliness fills my bowl, when uncertainty cascades into my cobalt blue cup, when life serves dashed dreams on my best dishes, I pull up a chair, […]