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Speaking the Truth

In Ephesians 4 and 5, the writer offers some “house rules” for living in Christian community. Among them, are these practical guidelines for being a community of truthfulness: “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and blown about by every wind of...

Time is Up, Time is Full

According to the Gospel of Mark, the first words of Jesus’ first sermon had to do with time: “The time is fulfilled.” He meant, in part, that time was up. There was a note of compelling urgency in his words—of impending crisis and approaching judgment. Time was...

Be kind. Be kind. Be kind.

The famous American novelist, Henry James, once gave this advice to his young nephew, Billy: “There are three things that are important in human life. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.”We are living in hard times:...

Moving forward

A small town newspaper reporter once said: “All the people I’ve interviewed can be divided into three categories: good, bad, and indifferent, but I’ve not written about many of the indifferent. The indifferent don’t make good stories.”Indifference doesn’t make for...

“Ten Deep Breaths Day”

Singer Jimmy Buffet once said, “I think that we ought to declare a universal ‘Ten-Deep-Breaths Day’ so that the whole world could stop and everybody just catch their breath.” Breathless describes a lot of us, doesn’t it? Running hard and fast...

Busy?

As you know, the Chinese language is comprised of pictographs; and, according to Wayne Muller, the symbol for busy is composed of two characters, heart and killing (Sabbath, p. 3). Too much busyness for too long is deadly, because it starves, stresses, and, finally,...

Ugliest Word in the English Language

As you probably know, the great American writer, Carl Sandburg, spent the last years of his life on a lovely farm not far from Asheville. A television interviewer once asked this fine writer, “What, in your opinion, is the ugliest word in the English language?”...

A Conference with Ourselves

Sometimes, when I am hitting a string of lousy shots in racquetball—skipping them to the floor or hitting them so high on the wall that even my opponents who are just as middle-aged as I am can easily return them—I will throw my hand up in the air, call a time-out,...

Wisdom

One of my favorite William Stafford poems is “The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune.” It concerns wisdom, which Stafford describes as “having things right in your life and knowing why.”Wisdom is having things right in your life and...

Who Jesus Is to Me

Some reflections I shared at our Good Friday service today:On this Good Friday, I simply want to tell you the man on the cross is to me. And, as I have before, I borrow a phrase from an Anglican bishop [John A. T. Robinson] to tell you that, for me, Jesus is the human...