How we live reflects what we know and believe about life and God.  If or when you take apart your life and your responses to it, you will arrive at the foundational belief about who God is in your life.  Taking your life to a spiritual director, and together putting your spiritual life under a […]

The invitation today is to consider what happens when you extent love to yourself.   God’s great commandment for the past 5,000 years remains unchanged:  You must love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself. Growing up with this clear instruction was confusing.  My neighbors were tough, and I did not love them at […]

God uses dirt in some outlandish ways.  Really.  For example, from the very first chapters of the Bible, God uses dirt to creates Adam.  Then, Adam and Eve’s first home is a garden, which depends on good dirt.  This first home is rooted in dirt, thrives in dirt, and even produces food that has fed […]

In Philip Yancey’s book, titled What’s so Amazing about Grace? the reader is invited into an expanded understanding of God and forgiveness. If you were raised in any kind of Christian church or community, the following insights may sound new, different, and yet fully like the God you and I are invited to love, to […]

Scaffolding is used during a building construction project.  It is an external and temporary structure used to support the work crew, their materials and tools, and even the edifice that is being built.  The scaffolding is a useful part of the construction process.  But it is not the finished product.  A time comes when the […]

A recent search on the internet reinforced my concern for Christians who live with or journey in and out of depression. Over and over, the experts said that more prayer and reading your bible is the key. While those are excellent ways to journey with God, they have not in my experience lessened depression. Acknowledging […]

Connection Eclipses Suffering As a spiritual director, people share with me how they are suffering and have suffered.  Suffering seems like a promise of living fully.  In the book of Job, we read that as the sparks from a fire fly upwards, so we humans will suffer at some time during our life’s journey. My […]

Practice:  I Love You If you are unfamiliar with Dr. James Finley, you are in for such kindness around God and God’s love for you.   Dr. Finley’s words and teachings are laced with compassion, acceptance, and goodness.  I came to this prayer practice via his YouTube titled: “The Peace that Surpasses Understanding.”  Then a week […]

Practice:  I KNOW In a small group of believers, two women wept together as a third member shared a stunning insight around Jesus words to his students, when they asked Jesus how they should live.  For several months, these two women had been praying and listening around Jesus’ answer.  “Stop lying. Do not do what […]

Practice Release You may be able to quote Psalms 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.”  Robert Alter offers a wonderful translation of the first two words of this verse.  He offers what is closer to, “Let go, and know that I am God.”[1]  In Alter’s commentary these words, let go, he writes […]