Saturday, January 28, 2012
December 31, 2011
So many people want balance in their lives. How often have you heard someone say he or she was looking for more balance? Maybe you’ve said it too. When our lives get overly busy or chaotic, we think they’re off kilter. We want things to go back to being more balanced: just enough busy-ness, just enough leisure, just right.
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September 30, 2010
TOMS Shoes does something easy to describe, and yet the impact of the company’s work is so powerful. As the name suggests, TOMS makes and sells shoes. But the business does more than that. Any time a customer buys a pair of shoes, TOMS gives a pair to a child in need. This sort of business-benevolence is what TOMS calls the One for One movement.
July 11, 2010
There is a song that, to me, is more beautiful and more uplifting than any other ever written. That song is Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleur.”
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March 10, 2010
We sometimes want to choose who God calls us to love and to serve.
For example, many of us say that poor people are poor because of their own bad choices, so they don’t deserve our help. Now, first of all, this largely isn’t true. But secondly, and more importantly, God calls us to love the poor no matter what. He doesn’t say “love the poor unless they made bad decisions.”
Similarly, he calls us to love immigrants. He doesn’t say love the immigrant, but only if he has his paperwork in order.
Leviticus 19:33-34 (The Message) says:
When a foreigner lives with you in your land, don’t take advantage of him. Treat the foreigner the same as a native. Love him like one of your own. Remember that you were once foreigners in Egypt. I am God, your God.
Why do we struggle with that? Why do we make our love conditional?
August 18, 2009
If you are to love your neighbor as yourself, who is your neighbor? This is of course what the Parable of the Good Samaritan is all about, and it’s fascinating to me. Christ says we are to love everyone without regard for race, nationality or any other trait or characteristic. That’s powerful, isn’t it?
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