“The wind is not always a gentle thing, particularly in cases of natural disasters like cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, and the like. Neither is the Spirit always a soft, guiding and sustaining image that we often consider.”
“Humility is a quiet virtue. It is difficult and not always seen as a popular position, but it is what Jesus consistently taught as the path that we need to follow.”
“The eyes of children so often reflect hopelessness. Their eyes glaze as they realize people approaching them are not there to help but to move them around, shuffle them to a different place, or even abuse them. I confess that looking at those eyes tears my heart apart. Instead of suffering the little children to come, I see them made to suffer, and I have to ask myself if that’s the Christian way? What would Jesus think?”
“When I think of things that are going on right now, the shootings, the stabbings, the deaths of children, the painful and fatal diseases, the traumas of losing children and parents, it makes me wonder how anyone can say that a loving God wills things like this to happen. All those scenarios seem to be huge mountains, and we don’t seem to have enough faith to move it, even if we were able.”
“Love thy neighbor as thyself doesn’t mean loving just people whose skin tone is the same as ours. It means loving our neighbor, no matter the color of their skin, as we love ourselves.”
“What I’m doing is like sticking a toe in the water to check the temperature and then gently wading out, deeper and deeper, until I am comfortable and once again a participating and contributing part of a community that accepts me and whatever gifts and ministries I can bring them. It’s not rebirth—once was enough for that—but it’s like a reception or hopeful return home.”
“The book of Acts reports instead that the Ethiopian remarked that there was some water and asked what prevented him from being baptized. That made me wonder about whether or not Philip had required a profession of faith, and what is sufficient for us to be baptized now?”
“I know that in some cultures, it’s customary for an error to be made somewhere in the product to show that a person made it and not merely a machine. I love that concept, but in my own work, it’s hard for me to make a mistake I can see and not fix it.”
“If a wineskin got a hole in it, it would be patched with the hope that it would hold the wine added to it. Just because something had a hole in it did not mean it could be discarded and a new one procured to replace it.”
“We see those children packed into detention centers, many of them mere tents, far from their parents, lost, alone, frightened, dirty, sometimes sickly, and probably hungry. These are lambs, and lambs are supposed to be tended, fed, and cared for because they don’t know how to fight for themselves.”