The Sanctity of Work

One ministry that learned of our work has started to send me their periodic updates via email. When I received this newsletter, I wanted to share and highlight what they have been learning and the impact they’re having on the world around them with you.  At Romanian Orphan Ministries, they have been learning about the [...]

Dallas Willard on Worldview

I’m a big fan of the writing of Dallas Willard. His recent book, Knowing Christ Today (which is quite different from his previous writings focused on spiritual formation) deals with themes of knowledge, truth, and worldview. Willard’s combined vocation as a Southern Baptist pastor and professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California enables him [...]

Sabbatical Reflections on Wisdom: The Perfect Light (Part 3 of 3)

In Matthew 11:18-19 and 23:34-36, we find Christ alluding to himself in the voice of wisdom. Like the plaintive cry of wisdom in Proverbs, we hear the lament of Christ, the Perfect Light, as he sits looking over the city of Jerusalem (Matt. 23:37): “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones [...]

Sabbatical Reflections on Wisdom: The Perfect Light (Part 2 of 3)

In addition to being the greatest teacher of the masses, he also discipled the few. He “hung out” with the twelve disciples for three years, eating with them, praying and worshipping with them, modeling the life of the kingdom of God for them, walking with them, and answering their questions. His discipleship was a life-on-life [...]

Sabbatical Reflections on Wisdom: The Perfect Light (Part 1 of 3)

The sages from the East spent months, perhaps a year or two, traveling great distances following the star until they found the Perfect Light – Wisdom himself. The Christ child was wisdom incarnate.
The baby that the wise men discovered, while being God, was every bit a human child. Like other children, he would nurse, cry, [...]

Sabbatical Reflections on Wisdom: We Three Kings of Orient Are

We three kings of Orient are
Bearing gifts we traverse afar.
Field and fountain, moor and mountain,
Following yonder star.
O star of wonder, star of night,
Star with royal beauty bright,
Westward leading, still proceeding,
Guide us to thy perfect Light.
So wrote American Pastor and hymn writer John Henry Hopkins, Jr. in 1857 in his beloved Christmas carol, We Three Kings. [...]

Sabbatical Reflections: Portals to Beauty (Part 3 of 3)

While this transformative prayer of contemplation is all God’s doing and not our doing, we can be prepared vessels to receive his initiative. Just as the healing of the land was God’s doing and not man’s in 2 Chronicles 7:14, the people of Israel were to be prepared for God to work:  “humble themselves and [...]

Sabbatical Reflections: Portals to Beauty (Part 2 of 3)

Once we have entered into relationship with the Beautiful One, how do we come further up and further in? One of the ways into deeper communion with God is what some saints have called contemplative prayer. This may be the heart’s reflection and longing for the Beautiful – the living God.
Fr. Thomas Dubay, a Catholic [...]

Sabbatical Reflections: Portals to Beauty (Part 1 of 3)

Have you ever looked at a beautiful sunset? I don’t mean just “watched it set,” but did you really see it? Have you seen it in your soul? A sunset is not merely beautiful, it is a portal to Beauty! So, too, is the star filled sky, the form of a pregnant woman, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, [...]

Sabbatical Reflections: Sehnsucht (Part 2 of 2)

So, what prevents us from pursuing and finding this great Joy?
The apostle Paul provides a clue when he writes about what theologians call general revelation. In his letter to the Christians in Rome he says (Romans 1: 18- 25, The Message):
18 But God’s angry displeasure erupts as acts of human mistrust and wrongdoing and lying [...]