Thoughts on the Beatitudes, Part 5: Blessed are the meek; they shall inherit the earth. OK, let’s get this out of the way. When I am driving behind you on a two-lane, double yellow line road and you are poking along at five miles per hour over the speed limit OR LOWER, I am not...... Read More

“And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from (the) evil (one).” When I started writing about the Lord’s Prayer, a friend of mine said that she couldn’t wait to see what I was going to do with this phrase. Lots of potential controversy lurks behind its words. Questions about the origin of...... Read More

Responding to last week’s post on “your will be done” someone made the comment “It looks like you think that God doesn’t care about our decisions.”  My offending remark had to do with a friend who wants to buy a house that his wife is not equally enamored of. My conclusion was that, in some...... Read More

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven (the Lord’s Prayer as a statement of faith, part 4). “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work” (Jesus in John 4:34). “I wish that God would just tell me what to do, and...... Read More

This week I’m going back to looking at the Lord’s Prayer, one of the supreme expressions of faith in Scripture. Jesus began with those simple, yet radical words of divine-human connection, “Our Father in heaven.” Infinite, intimate God at his most sublime. An invitation to trust and dependence, to rest and surrender. To ultimately become...... Read More

The shoulder’s doing great, thanks for asking. And I’m figuring out how to do more of the daily arm-related tasks for myself, so my non-dependent self is feeling a bit smug. I can sense the growing ability to be busy challenging the truth of my need for help from my wife and, ultimately, from God....... Read More

In my last post, I used the opening of the Lords prayer, “Our Father,” to begin an extended discussion on faith. Before pushing further into Jesus’ famous words, I thought it might be good to take a look at one feature of being a child of our father – the scary good truth of dependence....... Read More

Don’t you wish God was simple? What about believing in God, or knowing how to handle the regular moral and relational dilemmas that we face? Wouldn’t it be a relief to have a collection of Bible texts that could take us, step by step, through each day and each day’s demands? After all, life is...... Read More