On Confession and Forgiveness
The marvelous thing about sacramental confession is that when absolution is given by the priest as God’s representative, the offense is wiped away. We are not to dwell on it any more, but to go on afresh with our lives, knowing ourselves forgiven, restored, loved. My tendency has often been to go back and dwell […]
Power = Idolatry
When we wield power over other people, are we not becoming idolatrous as we take over the prerogatives of God? — Madeleine L’Engle, in Penguins and Golden Calves
Why Are the Sects Growing?
The sects and fundamentalists are growing because they offer black-and-white answers to all the unanswerable questions. The frightened person is given all the rules and assured that the few people who keep the rules and accept the answers to the unanswerable questions will be saved, and everybody else will be damned. The damnation of others […]
On All Things Working Together for Good…
God doesn’t plan the horrors. They happen. But God can come into them. — Madeleine L’Engle, A Live Coal in the Sea
On Good from Evil
Now the fact that God can make complex good out of simple evil does not excuse … those who do the simple evil. … Offenses must come, but woe to those by whom they come; sins do cause grace to abound, but we must not make that an excuse for continuing to sin. — C.S. […]
Who Do YOU Want to Rule?
Men must be ruled by God or they will be ruled by tyrants. — William Penn
On Religion
If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. — The Bible, […]
What God Expects of Us
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? — The Bible, Micah 6:8 (KJV)
On the Worship of God
The worship of Yah is an attitude. One strives for perfection in all things, including a forgetfulness of self. And one keeps a thankful heart, even in painful experience which we cannot interpret. Then we can only trust Him, knowing He rules all things which concern us. — Florence Marvyne Bauer, in Abram, Son of […]
Comfort for the Hurting
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble, and He knows them that trust in Him. — The Bible, Nahum 1:7