What we can do is examine our own hearts to see if there is anything in there which would hold us back from loving God with our whole beings, even if that means the lowest stratum of Hades, or losing face, or even being wrong.
Good listening can entail a small ego death. It is hard work. Not only does it mean setting aside your personal agendas, it means risking appearing foolish.
May we not retreat into our own concerns without remembering that as Church we are called to engage in the world and work for justice and peace, to prophetically call for mercy and reconciliation where injustice and oppression have previously taken root.
How many times have we given things up for dead? How many good intentions have we failed to act on? How many relationships have we neglected? How many chances to forgive have we ignored? How many chances to ask forgiveness have we let slide? How many calls for help have we ignored? How many opportunities to witness Christ’s love have we passed up?
Before we create an impossibly long to-do list for the day, we should take stock of what God has done for us overnight.
In the Magazine this month, we’re exploring the lived experience of marriage from within and without. In this post, Laurie Gudim ponders the power of liturgy as she recalls the day she and Rosean stood together to tell everyone how important they were to each other.
We are not whole, and our communities are not whole. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are in the midst of a storm maybe more than one.
This cautionary tale should remind all of us that what we say and what we do have to line up.
Today we mourn the loss of our brothers and sisters at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
There are many ways to be good linguists. Sometimes it is in making the Gospel stories our own and repeating them in our own words. Sometimes it is in speaking simply about our own relationships with the living God. It can be through doing something that reveals the love of God for those whom we serve. And sometimes it is in learning somebody else’s concepts and speaking about Christ through them.