During our annual vision meeting I shared that one of our six expressions of honoring God as a healthy Christ follower is Radical love.  What is radical love? Loving people when they least expect and least deserve it.  C. S. Lewis said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” Everyone has broken relationships.  With a wounded heart we can build walls to keep the pain out; to keep ourselves from being hurt again.  When we do this we end up locking ourselves in a prison and locking people out.  To rebuild relationships you have...

One of the greatest quests of life is the quest for satisfaction. We live our lives pursuing hard after it. We search for something to satiate the pangs of our human appetites — something to quench the dull ache of our unfulfilled cravings. Human beings are hungry creatures. We look for food in all kinds of places: money or possessions, strings of relationships or nonstop activity, sex or power, fame or approval. When fed, unrestrained appetites only get bigger and bigger while leaving us less and less satisfied.  Do you know how we know this? Because of McDonald’s. In 1955, the largest soda...

Jesus says this: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” We hear that and we go, “What’s the big deal?” But Jesus’ audience was very prideful, spiritually prideful. The Jewish people had their sights set on a Messiah.  This long awaited messiah would come and deliver them. They were longing that the Messiah would come and restore them to their rightful position.  It’s a position of power as they were God’s chosen people. So this must have been crazy and puzzling for them to hear “blessed are the meek.”  Jesus was saying to them, “You can have a full life...

In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, there is a point in the order of service where the congregation kneels and confesses its sins. “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,” the congregation says. “We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”   It is a powerful moment—but it isn’t the end. While the congregation continues to kneel, the minister declares the words of absolution. He announces to the congregation that God...