The kind responses to my last post have overwhelmed me with a sense of grace. You - my readers' grace - but even deeper, the grace of God which bowls me over with its lavishness. When I was on a team of teacher/preachers we would often call out the themes each one of us returned […]

Something I find myself pondering these days: Self-righteousness, in a group of people who claim to believe that the Scripture is correct when it says "There is no one righteous; not one …" is an especially ugly trait. Particularly to a watching world … It was actually one of the few sins Jesus seemed to […]

We are a competitive culture, aren’t we? We work really hard. We strive. We are creatures of the Protestant work ethic, and most of the outflow is good; we give our best, we aim for excellence, we want to be all we can be. You know the drill … But, when this effort-laden way of […]