Taking the Alternate Route
It a bright and cloudless day, 9:00 AM and 24*F, when I parked the at the Chamisa Trail trailhead on Hyde Park Road. We were in Santa Fe for the week while Cyndi …
Hearing God in Suffering: How to Live a Dying Life
I had a high school friend whose life overflowed with compassion. The rest of us were obsessed with college-prep, extra-curricular activities, and jobs. But he, like a lion, could sniff out a wounded …
Hearing God to See Him
Thirty-three years ago I took a woman to a Gilbert and Sullivan play as a first date. Before the evening of our get-together, I had a collection of facts about her: she was a farmer’s daughter, she …
Squeezing Bad News from the Good News
Last spring I attended a wedding and heard an impressive pastor preach a stirring sermon on a powerful passage called The Kenosis (or The Emptying).
It’s my favorite passage on humility:
Though he …
When God hits the reset button
We’ve all had the experience with our smart-phone, tablet or computer when it didn’t act like it was supposed to. It stopped doing something it was designed to do or it started doing …
The Heart of Spiritual Warfare
Plato urges us: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.” If you are breathing, you are under a spiritual assault. The question we face is not, “Are we under attack?” but, “What is …
Common Sense or Nonsense?
The speaker was persuasive and moving. He asked us to hug a friend, stomp on the floor, and even pinch our own forearms. It didn’t hurt that he could have been a GQ model: six foot three, …
“Get up and win that race!”
As I was listening to a friend’s story to help him find the vein of gold that runs through his life, I remembered a poem that a mentor gave me years ago. I thought that God …
Fashions and Outfits, Fads and Beliefs
When I was ten years old, bell-bottoms flooded the fashion world like a tsunami. They were everywhere, but my mother wouldn’t let me wear them. (Her lame excuse was something like, “You shouldn’t be a …
The Hard Edge of the Good News
Last week, a delay by God disappointed me. It also shocked me awake like smelling salts.
For ten years, I’ve wanted (and waited) to write a book on hearing God. Last month, I finally finished …
Fighting Your Way Through
Many years ago Brent Curtis, (friend, counselor, author of The Sacred Romance) told me that sometimes we are not motived to seek help, healing, rescue or change despite the pain we are in until we …
Why Don’t We Think First? For a Change
A couple years ago I had an awful day in the middle of a horrible week in the midst of a bad month. A sniffle turned into post-nasal drip which turned into bronchitis—for the third time in five …