The Path: Peace
If you think about how we respond to conflict in our everyday lives, it could be in our work, our relationships, or even in our beliefs, we tend to seek peace with a peacekeeper’s mindset rather than a peacemaker’s mindset.
We might be in a conversation with someone with whom we fundamentally disagree; we may even see that their way of doing something, will, in the long run, be insufficient to meet the real demands of such and such a project, or such and such a problem. But because they are the louder voice or a larger personality, we might choose to hold our tongues and keep our opinions to ourselves. Yet, in doing so, we fail to see the ramifications of our silence.
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The Path: Possessions
Life can be difficult, filled with much pain and suffering. But what makes life worth living are the people in our lives— the people we give to and the people that give to us. The act of giving need not be lavish or expensive to make a difference in someone’s life. It simply needs to be the kind of giving that acknowledges the recipient's value in the world.
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The Path: Prestige
Nothing drives us in our social circles and our work quite like the want of prestige does.
We may not need to be the person at the very top, but we certainly don’t want to be the person at the very bottom. Wherever we are, we all want more.
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The Path: Plans
What is God's plan for your life? Is that even the right question to ask? Does God have plans for people, or is that something we ascribe to our experiences and pursuits to make ourselves feel important?
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Sacrament Seven: Roles
There may be no other institution on the face of the earth where roles are so poorly defined as they are in the church. Who's who? What's what? What is my part in all of this?
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Sacrament Six: Relationships
The Sixth Sacrament is The Sacrament of Matrimony (or marriage). This Sacrament is good news to those who've found someone for whom the stars collided and the planets aligned to unite you with your soulmate... but what about the rest of us?
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Sacrament Five: Treatment
Some thoughts on healing.
How do we rejoice in life for those who experience the miraculous so easily, while we have to go through the hard times to learn what we need to learn to make us into what we need to be?
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Sacrament Two: Water
Some believe that baptism makes a person a member of a church. Some believe that baptism is what keeps a person from going to Hell when they die. Still, others believe that baptism causes a miraculous change in the direction of one’s life.
If you were raised in the church, it's likely that you were taught one of these three things about baptism. But what is baptism, really?
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Sacrament One: Words
Most of what we see being done and said in a house of worship finds its explanation in the scriptures. And that's not just for Christianity. There are scriptures for just about every belief system in the world.
Within Christianity specifically, there are different approaches when it comes to making sense of The Bible. What are they?
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Smell The Roses
Why do we celebrate Pentecost? Wouldn’t we be better off learning about something more concrete, practical, and useful to our lives? If we aren't prone to seasons of celebration in our lives, Pentecost has something deeply important to teach us.
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God Our Mother
As a culture, we often place more emphasis on the Fatherhood of God than we do the Motherhood of God. Some of us may have never even heard the phrase, “the Motherhood of God” used before. But if we do a careful search of the scriptures, we see that there is a Mother-side of God that is important for us to implement into the practice of our beliefs.
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Ghost Stories
Is faith a predisposition? Could a person who believes in God and spiritual things more easily than others be that way because it's wired into them? If so, what about those of us who aren't wired that way? Where is our place in all of this?
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What We Bring To The Table
If you drive down the strip in any major city, you'll pass all kinds of businesses that perform and provide the same goods and services, but with different expressions. Restaurants, grocery store chains, different kinds of car dealerships, doctors, dentists, electronic's stores, and yes, even churches.
Where some see division, God sees unity. Where some see competition, God sees cooperation.
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The Third Way
Our lives are a series of choices.
The culture around us seems to be all too aware that we are wired to pick from extremes. We see it in politics. We see it in business. And yes, we see it in faith.
So how should we choose?
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Mitzvah
If we don’t obey God's commandments, will we be punished? And is that what ought to motivate us to obey?
The true meaning of the word, “mitzvah” helps bring clarity to all of this confusion.
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The Struggle Is Real
Why do we struggle? Why do we suffer? Did we miss something? Have we done something wrong? Is there any meaning to it all, or are we just cursed?
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What Is Sin?
What is sin? When is something wrong? What is displeasing to God? The answer to this question might seem like an easy one, but the more we think about it, the more complex it gets.
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Teach Me To Pray
We all have different opinions about prayer. Some of us do it to calm ourselves. Some of us do it in moments of panic when the only thing that can fix our problems is a miracle. Some of us do it simply out of duty. Some of us do it because it makes us feel closer to God. For most of us, it’s a combination of all of the above. But what is the purpose of prayer, really?
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How God Heals
Does God heal? If so, how? And of what? Some things? All things?
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When Light Breaks
There are all kinds of things in our lives that we see or hear that inspire us. It might be a lecture, a film, a piece of music, a work of art, or even a passage of scripture. But does inspiration stay just that? In the realm of thoughts, dreams, or “maybe-somedays?”
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