Heart And Soul
A Worshipful Soul
“To worship God in truth means to worship God with our whole being,” says the pastor of the Church of the Resurrection Online Congregation. This statement fits the Christian understanding of one’s “soul” as the whole of who we authentically are, living in relationship to God. Worship is our whole-person response to God’s grace. The…
Read MoreGod’s Heart is Forgiving . . .
“God fashions the hearts of them all” Psalm 33:15 God has made every one of us to live as a part of God’s entire creation. Life itself is a wondrous gift given to us moment by moment, to shape and to use as we see fit. This is stewardship: whatever we do on God’s behalf…
Read MorePrayer for an Open Heart **
Lord, grant me a simple, kind, open, believing, loving, and generous heart worthy of being your dwelling-place. ** — From prayer by John Sergieff, 1829-1908, in The Harper Collins Book of Prayers: A Treasury of Prayers Through the Ages (HarperSanFrancisco, 1994); cited in When True Simplicity Is Gained: finding Spiritual Clarity in…
Read MoreThe Bible on the Church and Ministry
The People of God The historic community whose origin stemmed from God’s covenant promises and whose pilgrimage had been sustained by God’s call. 1 Peter 2:9-10 – You are . . . God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of the One Who called you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light.…
Read MoreLiving from the Soul
“Living from the Soul” These months of “sheltering in place” because of the pandemic have stripped away a lot of extra coming and going. Although I am already retired from the official work world, this different use of time has prompted me to question what over the years has tended to become an armload…
Read MoreQuotes about the Faith Community
The community is a discipline of mutual encouragement and mutual testing, keeping me both hopeful and honest about the love that seeks me, the love I seek to be. – Parker J. Palmer Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense…
Read MoreLiving from the Heart
“To speak of the heart is not to sentimentalize but to ensoul,” says author Thomas Moore. “There is a toughness and intelligence about living from the heart. . . .”1 Moore uses the phrase living from the heart to describe what the Gospels imply about a new sense of self: “openness to experience, to the…
Read MoreGenesis and the Image of God
“Our soul is our true self, the essence of who we are, seeking to grow more and more into the image of God,” says Growing Generous Souls,1 pondering Genesis 1:26-27. But what is the image of God? Beyond that book’s couple of paragraphs, here are a few further reflections. Some renowned Bible scholars confirm the…
Read MoreOur Identity in Christ
What Jesus said and did in the Gospels are signs of who he is. But how do we apply that to who we are in Christ? Where else can we turn to find additional guidance about who we are because of Christ’s work in our lives? Colossians 3:8-17 can help us see the shape of…
Read MoreGrowing a Courageous Heart
Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD. (Psalm 31:24) It takes courage to live a life open and vulnerable to God, especially in times of suffering, hostility, or crisis. Courage usually does not come all at once. It can grow within us even before outward deliverance from…
Read MoreLiving Closer to the Hub of the Wheel
Written for Giving: Growing Joyful Stewards in Your Congregation, Vol. 22, No. 1, By the Ecumenical Stewardship Center Living Closer to the Hub of the Wheel Year-round stewardship is not about repetitive, one-time church programs. It’s about helping people become more generous in many dimensions of their lives. This includes becoming more joyful and faithful…
Read MoreThe Worshipful Soul
“To worship God in truth means to worship God with our whole being,” says the pastor of the Church of the Resurrection Online Congregation. This statement fits our understanding of one’s “soul” as the whole of who we authentically are in relationship to God. Worship is our whole-person response to God’s grace. The Greek word…
Read MoreEugene Peterson Writing About the Soul
Eugene Peterson was a U.S. Presbyterian clergyman, scholar, theologian, poet, and author of more than thirty books, including The Message, an award-winning paraphrase of the Bible. In Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 1 he says four terms 2 work interactively to give us a common vocabulary for exploring the Christian life. One of them…
Read MoreThomas Kelly and the Inner Sanctuary
There is an amazing inner sanctuary of the soul, said Quaker evangelist Thomas Kelly:1 a Divine Center or Voice to which we can continually return. Kelly called this Center “the Inward Living Christ,” “Christ Within,” or “The Light Within.” He spoke of renewed immediacy with this Center, which encourages us to keep growing in our…
Read MoreLiving from a Grateful Heart
“I give thanks to You, O God,” we pray, along with the one who prayed Psalm 86 aloud in worship thousands of years ago. For us, in that moment of realization we are face to face with the Divine, we want to pray this not just with words, but also with our actions: how we…
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