... way we behave, will spring from the way we are clothed. Many of you will go on treks and safaris, hikes and climbs this summer. When we go on a hike, we don’t go in shorts and a bathing suit. We put on protective clothing: hiking boots, hat, warm vest. We venture forth into wilderness places prepared by the clothing we wear. When you work on a building or construction site, you wear steel-tipped shoes, protective eye mask, hard hat, and gloves. You don’t go in as though you were going to the opera. When ...
... asked for others to participate in his miracles. And it’s not because he needed their help. It’s because they needed to take a step of faith in order for him to act. When you pray for patience, God doesn’t just grant you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. He sends challenging people and situations into your path. When you pray for wisdom, God sends you situations that require humility and discernment. We learn God’s greatest lessons through the challenges he sends us. I think that’s why Jesus asked ...
... means that Christ is the Savior of the entire world. He is not the Savior of a small homogeneous group alone. I may be cold and stiff with little ability to express my emotions, but he is my Savior just as surely as he is the Savior of the warm-hearted believer who jumps three pews to express his conviction. He is the Lord and Father of us all. This brings us to the final thing to be said, and that is concerning the missionary nature of Pentecost. The Christian movement was never intended to be an exclusive ...
... ... I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Ah, so bucolic. So serene, so restful — so grassy-field pastoral. For sheep, I imagine living life to the fullest includes ample pasture, clean fresh water, shelter in bad weather (dry and warm), safety from predators (four- and two-legged), protection from wandering away from the flock, nap times all fit in between grazing times, fathering and mothering lots of lambs, and dying gently in one’s sleep rather than for someone’s dinner or as ...
... De Vinci’s Last Supper and Salvador Dali’s The Sacrament of the Last Supper. These are beatific forms of Jesus, bestowing blessings and peace in a calm before the storm. Little wonder then that Jesus’ directives to those with him come across to us as warm fuzzies. We are under the spell of Jesus’ soothing, comforting voice: the voice we imagine, the voice that lulls us, the voice that we have no real clue as to its actual sound, tone, cadence, or inflection. I think I need to experience this passage ...
... , two more bottles of water and a full 24 hours later, nary a sound. The test showed electrolytes were in the ninetieth percentile as with all his other tests. The diagnosis? Somewhere along the way a combination of routinely wrapping the child too warmly (his older brother refused to sleep unless wrapped in multiple layers), combined with a very mild episode of diarrhea, (the questionnaire had only asked of bouts lasting more than a day), had caused the boy to become just dehydrated enough, that even with ...
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.
For some students, school is the only place where they get a hot meal and a warm hug. Teachers are sometimes the only ones who tell our children they can go from an Indian reservation to the Ivy League, from the home of a struggling single mom to the White House.
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.