An Egyptian court last week sentenced an author to five years in prison. His crime? Insulting religion. He penned a book entitled Where is God? which some Muslims deemed offensive. Egyptian law, according to one report, "gives all Muslims the right to file lawsuits in cases where an exalted right of God has been violated." But maybe God can take it. At least that's what Ian Punnett argues in his new book How to Pray When You're Pissed at God, a title that might spark similar offense in some … [Read more...]
How to cultivate spiritual peace at work
March 18, 2013 By 11 Comments
Things today seem more fragmented than ever. Try focusing on your job, for instance, amid the alerts for incoming email, social media updates, and meeting invites. Add to that phone calls, interrupting coworkers, and elastic tasks stretching past allotted times and squeezing into others. Nice knowing you, margin. And that's just what outsiders impose. Inside the mind there are -- at least for me -- forty-two stray thoughts trying to push to the fore, some succeeding and distracting me while … [Read more...]
Read this before you pray for that Mercedes
February 3, 2013 By 10 Comments
Is it true that whatever you pray for, you'll receive it if you have enough faith? Jesus seems to say so. "[W]hatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will," he tells Peter and the Twelve (Mark 11.24). These words followed Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. While hungry, he spotted a fig tree. But after looking over its barren branches in vain, Jesus cursed the tree. The next day, as the disciples walk by, Peter noticed the poor thing, dried up and shriveled. … [Read more...]
Porn and the contemplative life
January 19, 2013 By 11 Comments
They don't mix, if you're looking for the answer up front. There are perhaps several reasons for this, but Alain de Botton offers one in The Wall Street Journal worth considering. Certain kinds of suffering are beneficial, even necessary for human flourishing, he says, particularly struggling through periods of anxiety and boredom. Porn diverts us from those struggles. "Our anxious moods are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss," he says, "and so they need to be listened … [Read more...]
Two powerful songs you may have never heard
December 17, 2012 By 4 Comments
Everybody knows the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, right? If you've stepped anywhere near Sunday school, heard an old-timey gospel song, or glanced sideways while your four-year-old watched VeggieTales, you've picked it up. It's an compelling story of faith and rescue, and today the Orthodox and Lutheran churches celebrate Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah -- their Hebrew names -- along with Daniel the Prophet. But what many may have missed are two songs, "The Prayer of Azariah" and … [Read more...]
There’s no such thing as private prayer
November 6, 2012 By 7 Comments
Modern Christians have a tendency to view their prayer life as a private matter. But as I discovered while researching my book Lifted by Angels, our counterparts in the early church assumed the active participation of angels in believers’ prayer lives. “[T]he angel of each of us prays alongside us,” wrote the third-century theologian Origen in his primer on prayer. How do we know when angels are present? Feelings of comfort, humility, and joy indicate their presence. When those … [Read more...]
The sound of (blessed) silence
July 5, 2012 By 7 Comments
How often do we listen for God, hear the thoughts of our hearts, reflect, and pray? Our days are hurried, and that's problem enough. But noise is a real problem too. I'll speak for myself here -- you'll have to weigh how much of an issue this is for you -- but noise for me is nearly constant. My car stereo plays jazz, rock, folk, classical, audio books, and podcasts, but it always plays. My iPhone often doubles as a Spotify and Pandora jukebox when I'm not talking, and my iPod spins the … [Read more...]
The Lord’s Prayer: God’s words, our needs
July 1, 2012 By 5 Comments
Why does the Lord's Prayer matter? Let the context answer the question. In Luke's account, Jesus' disciples approach. They point to John the Baptist's practice of teaching his disciples to pray and ask for similar treatment. "Teach us to pray," they implore. This is a reasonable request. What is a person, a fallen human, supposed to say to an almighty, all-holy God? God tells us that his ways are not ours. We cannot identify with him. And if prayer is communication between two persons, a … [Read more...]
A community of prayer
May 30, 2012 By 4 Comments
Jesus tells us not to pray in public. But he doesn’t teach us to pray by ourselves. The Lord addresses this in the Sermon on the Mount. Right after saying that we shouldn't call attention to our charity, but rather do it in secret, Jesus tells his disciples to pray the same way. "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites," he says; "for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. . . . But when you pray, go into your … [Read more...]
The business of prayer
May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
It's easy to delay prayer as we brace for the daily grind, and easier still to forget about it as we wade through the tumult of the day. But what if we thought of prayer as our first and most important job? In his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent, John Climacus refers to prayer as the work of angels. Christians are invited to join in this labor as part of our walk with Christ. I think there's merit to linking words like work and labor to the subject of prayer. The word liturgy in fact … [Read more...]
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