Yesterday was the commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was martyred for his opposition to the Nazis. He considered taking refuge in the United States, where he was teaching, but he returned to Germany to continue his work in the resistance. He was arrested April 5, 1943 and imprisoned in Berlin. Three days […]
Faith in Action
Money CAN Buy Happiness
“Money can’t buy happiness.” Turns out, it’s not so. Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School, has done extensive research on money and happiness, and Norton says in fact money can buy happiness. It’s just that we usually spend on the wrong things. Norton’s team did a little experiment. They went to the University […]
The Parable of the Procrastinator
Once you have lived a few years, you understand how precious is time. When you were quite young you knew there were certain things that needed your attention, needed to be done, but you were too busy. Besides, there was always tomorrow. If you needed to lose a few pounds or cut back on your […]
Sending Up My Timber
My daughter Sharon, who’s studying for the ministry at Yale Divinity School (one proud father I am!), told me this week about a great sermon she’d heard by an old Baptist preacher. “He spoke about the quiet people,” Sharon wrote. “The folks who sit at church and don’t make a big fuss over themselves, the […]
God is a Verb
In matters of faith, nouns rule. People talk about what they believe in, and you get a limp procession of nouns: peace, justice, love, the Bible, heaven, salvation. All powerful things, but not in the nominative form. To get at the power inherent in those things we have to find the verb. We’ve got to […]
The Echo of Life
Perhaps the most pernicious assumption about life is that we can attain some ideal by the practice of its opposite. We can see this plainly in world leaders who are certain that one more war will finally bring us peace. We remember the famous line from the U.S. Army officer who said of the Vietnamese […]
“I Wanna Buy a Dress!”
‘Tis the shopping season, and I’m reminded of a lovely story about a woman who was an associate pastor of a large Presbyterian church in southernCalifornia. She loved to go to Nordstroms in Bel Air, mostly to enjoy the holiday ambiance and the live Christmas music on all five floors. She was up […]
Do One Small Thing
Statistics can paralyze. Of the world’s 6.8 billion people, 925 million don’t have enough to eat. That’s more than the population of the U.S., Canada and the European Union all put together. Global food prices are rising sharply—because of population increase, rising oil prices and climate change. The world’s poorest spend 80% of their income […]