This past week, as I was working on a sermon about the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:16-26) I was struck by a contradiction in how we talk about “faith.”  At first I thought about this contradiction as a paradox,...

One of our deepest and strongest desires as humans is to know God and be known by God.  This is true in both a subjective sense and in an objective sense:  I deeply and strongly desire a relationship with God and...

“Who’s to blame?” This is a question asked and answered all too frequently.  Sometimes it is simply an attempt to avoid responsibility; if someone else can be blamed, then I will look better.  Sometimes it is an honest attempt to...

Yesterday we needed to stop by the grocery store on our way home so we took an unusual route.  While waiting to make a left hand turn I noticed three women at the bus stop across the street.  It didn’t...

A couple of weeks ago I read an interesting collection of quotes on the website, Brain Pickings, “Nobel-Winning Physicist Niels Bohr on Subjective vs. Objective Reality and the Uses of Religion in a Secular World.” I couldn’t agree more. In...

I’ve been working on writing this post for four days now.  It started from an insight I had on Saturday.  I was ready to publish it on Monday morning, but it couldn’t pass my editor.  So I began a process...

A caveat to begin with:  It is easy for me to deceive myself about my lack of self-deception.  This is a given of human life in the same way that it is easy to be proud of my humility, or...

I love words.  I love their form and feel, their shape and size, their tone and taste and texture.  I love the way they adapt and transform and move; words adapt to new situations even as they adapt our thinking;...

I am looking out my window at our fig tree which is leafing out after winter dormancy.  The new leaves are light green.  Later in the year they will be darker and shiny, but now they gather in the afternoon...

In my last post, I wrote about the degrees of separation between the readers of the Bible and the people whose experiences of God found their way into the Scriptures.  I talked about the people who had the experiences and...