Good morning... I woke this morning to a pleasant surprise. Blessing my inbox at 3:00 am was the introduction to our With God Weather Life Advent devotional. After I had labored hard to deliver the heavy manuscript, I gifted to the church the baby God had conceived in my soul's womb. Our talented Creative Services department added gorgeous [...]
Good morning... The person with the most nicknames in our family is our youngest son, Jeremiah. Jay. Jerry. Jay-bird. J.J. Jubes. Jerold. Jay-bar-tinkle (not sure where that one came from). Jesus himself had lots of nicknames. Lord. Christ. Master. Son of God. Son of man. The Word made flesh. The list goes on and on, but currently my favorite nickname for [...]
Good morning... Do you get nervous when you wake up on the morning you are scheduled to be the speaker? I do. I really do. I really do, and here is why. I do not know what I am supposed to say. I do not know what others need to hear. I do not know what joys and sorrows [...]
Good morning... On our behalf, Jesus continues praying to his Father. "I gave them your word. The godless world hated them because of it, because they didn’t join the world’s ways, just as I didn’t join the world’s ways. I’m not asking that you take them out of the world but that you guard them from the Evil One. They are no [...]
Good morning... Sometimes we meet soul-to-soul before we ever see one another face-to-face. This is the sacred situation occurring between me and a subscriber from Charlotte, North Carolina. Mary writes me periodically to fill me in on her painful process of grieving her son, Dalton, who died suddenly at age twenty-one. In previous posts on the topic of [...]
Good morning... "As I read this morning's message," one of you wrote after reading of the "hidden wholeness" of fall, "I thought of the Bible study I am doing, The Good and Beautiful God series. Might we look at autumn as an opportunity to shed old self-protective habits to make room for the Holy Spirit within us to make [...]
Good morning... I am grateful God allowed me to sleep in today, until about half an hour before my 8:00 am meeting. Had I crafted our morning message in the wee hours of the night, it would not have been this one, and this one is exquisite, for all the ways you will discover. "I thought you would [...]
Good morning... As we gathered for communion in a small church in the woods, the pastor extended gentle words of invitation: "The will of God is the way of life, and we want to get all wrapped up in it." Jotting the sentence in my bulletin, I return to the statement now. If the will of God is [...]
Good afternoon... Like me, you have probably seen yesterday's haunting image of the migrant dad with his toddler daughter tucked beneath his shirt, laying dead on the shore, after trying to swim to freedom in America. Tragic. Disturbing. Gut-Wrenching. But what can I do in Atlanta about this humanitarian crisis on our border? Then I watched America's Got [...]
Good morning... Whatever life phase surrounds us right now, this day and each day is distilled down to two simple tasks. Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well [...]
