January 2012

With Lent right around the corner, I've been thinking that now would be a good time to rummage through my old attic of spiritual disciplines, pull out an oft-forgotten item, dust…

Hey Bloom Family - I wanted to take a few minutes here to both recap our gathering last night (in case you missed it) in which we talked at length about…

There is more to be said, however, on "give us this day our daily bread" (see here for part 1 of this post). As we have already seen, Jesus' mention…

Early this morning, the former president of Oral Roberts University, Richard Roberts, was arrested on a DUI charge.  He was released on an $1,100 bail just a few hours ago.…

Jesus' prayer thus far has taken us on a journey that radically decentralizes the "self".  We are called to approach God not first of all in a spirit of "gab",…

The first "requests" of the Lord's Prayer are three, set in parallel: Hallowed be Thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done Parallelism is a common rhetorical device in…

Now that we've got the "To Whom" we pray part down ("Our Father who art in heaven"), Jesus begins to teach us the "For What" of prayer.  And it is…

"Our Father, who art in heaven..." is how Jesus begins his teaching on prayer.  Interesting that Jesus thinks it's important that we know the location of the God to whom…

The rabid individualism of our culture infects and spoils our lives in a myriad of ways, not least in the life of prayer.  We are told that we need to…

What is your view of God like?  Austere, remote, distant?  Unapproachable, unimaginable, vague?  Micromanaging, autocratic, tyrannical?  Petty, fault-finding, judgmental?  Angry, ill-tempered, irascible?  Disinterested, dispassionate, impersonal? How we see God will…