Wednesday, August 19, 2020Relationships“Loveless relationships–those that humiliate, deplete emotional energy, and exhaust the spirit–are a temptation because submission to certain forms of abuse, especially from family, all too often hooks people of faith who have big hearts, but not very big shields, and sometimes mistake low self-esteem for humility. Among the questions that can help […]

Tuesday, August 18, 2020Watching & Seeing “Watching takes time. What isn’t quite so clear is that seeing takes time. ‘They have eyes and see not,’ Isaiah warns, speaking, it seems, about people who glance and look away, who skim surfaces, hunting for what confirms their expectations, who look only long enough to make the snap […]

Monday, August 17, 2020Letting Go“One of the many purposes of reading Scripture is to wander among it’s stories of human confusion, loss, discovery, and triumph and see in all of them how the Spirit of God broods over the waters, how God speaks in dreams, calls the unlikeliest people, and sends angels in disguise. It […]

Friday, August 14, 2020The Gift of Unexpected Transitions Heuertz writes, “Transitions are important and can actually be quite healthy for communities. The solutions to the problems connected to bad transitions should never lead to transitionless communities but to greater opportunities to act with honor and respect.  Communities will fail and community members will, too, but […]

Thursday, August 13, 2020The Freedom to Leave Transitions aren’t easy, which is why deciding to make a change in your life can be difficult. Chris Heurertz explains, “A few years ago, a Dutch Reformed pastor and a dear friend, passed along a document his church used to help people leave that congregation. The title of […]

Wednesday, August 12, 2020Freedom to FailAuthor Chris Heuertz offers a reflection on failure:“If we’re not failing once in a while–or for some of us, all the time–odds are good that we’re not living a life that presses us into the possibilities and risks necessary to grow into the possibilities and risks necessary to grow into […]

Tuesday, August 11, 2020The Dark Side of Freedom Writer Chris Heuertz describes a ministry that works with women in India who were rescued from trafficking. In this chapter, he uses their stories to make a point about freedom. “Freedom is beautiful, but like all things, it has a dark side. Every woman who lives into […]

Monday, August 10, 2020Community ​“In community we join together lives that are bursting with promise and potential but that are also marked by grief and sorrow. We exist as individual strands of a larger narrative. When our lives are woven together with others’, something new emerges–rich in texture, vibrant and transcendent. The diversity and richness […]

Friday, August 7, 2020Love“The religion of Jesus makes the love-ethic central.” page 79In writing about love, Howard Thurman focuses on the true work of love: loving one’s enemy. For love to happen, forgiveness is necessary for three reasons.First, God forgives us, again and again and again, for what we do intentionally as well as our […]

Thursday, August 6, 2020Hate “Christianity has been almost sentimental in its effort to deal with hatred in human life. It has sought to get rid of hatred by preaching, by moralizing, by judging. It has hesitated to analyze the basis of hatred and to evaluate it in terms of its significance in the lives of […]