Archive for October, 2025

From Accumulation to Abundance

October 7th, 2025

Money and Soul

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Richard Rohr articulates an opportunity for each of us to rediscover a “soulful” relationship with money.  

I’m convinced that money and soul are united on a deep level. This truth is reappearing from the deep stream of wisdom traditions after centuries of almost total splitting and separation at the conscious level. There is un río mas profundo, a river beneath the river. The upper stream has always been money in all its forms, beginning with trading and bartering. The deeper stream is the spiritual meaning such exchanges must have for our lives. Money and soul have never been separate in our unconscious because they are both about human exchanges, and therefore, divine exchange, too.  

From my perspective, when money and soul are separated, religion is the major loser. Without a vision of wholeness that puts money in its soulful place, religion “sells out.” Religion has allowed itself to lose the only ground on which awe and transcendence stand—the foundation of totally gratuitous and “amazing grace.” [1] 

Lynne Twist, founder of the Soul of Money Institute, understands the impact that our culture’s disintegrated view of money has made:  

For most of us, this relationship with money is a deeply conflicted one, and our behavior with and around money is often at odds with our most deeply held values, commitments, and ideals—what I call our soul…. I believe that under it all, when you get right down to it and uncover all the things we’re told to believe in, … what deeply matters to human beings, our most universal soulful commitments and core values, is the well-being of the people we love, ourselves, and the world in which we live. 

We really do want a world that works for everyone. We don’t want children to go hungry. We don’t want violence and war to plague the planet…. We don’t want torture and revenge and retribution to be instruments of government and leadership. Everyone wants a safe, secure, loving, nourishing life for themselves and the ones they love and really for everyone….  

Each of us experiences a lifelong tug-of-war between our money interests and the calling of our soul. When we’re in the domain of soul, we act with integrity. We are thoughtful and generous, allowing, courageous, and committed. We recognize the value of love and friendship….  

In the grip of money, those wonderful qualities of soul seem to be less available. We become smaller…. We often grow selfish, greedy, petty, fearful, or controlling…. We see ourselves as winners or losers, powerful or helpless, and we let those labels deeply define us in ways that are inaccurate….  

In a world that seems to revolve around money, it is vital that we deepen our relationship with our soul and bring it to bear on our relationship with money…. We can have our money culture both balanced and nourished by soul. [2] 

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Sarah Young Jesus Calling

In order to hear My voice, you must release all your worries into My care. Entrust to Me everything that concerns you. This clears the way for you to seek My Face unhindered. Let Me free you from fear that is hiding deep inside you. Sit quietly in My Presence, allowing My Light to soak into you and drive out any darkness lodged within you.
      Accept each day just as it comes to you, remembering that I am sovereign over your life. Rejoice in this day that I have made, trusting that I am abundantly present in it. Instead of regretting or resenting the way things are, thank Me in all circumstances. Trust Me and don’t be fearful; thank Me and rest in My sovereignty.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

1st Peter 5:6-7 (NLT)
6 So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor. 7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 5:6: We often worry about our position and status, hoping to get proper recognition for what we do. But Peter advises us to remember that God’s recognition counts more than human praise. God is able and willing to bless us according to his timing. Humbly obey God regardless of present circumstances, and in his good time – either in this life or the next – he will honor you.

Additional insight regarding 1st Peter 5:7: Carrying your worries, stresses, and daily struggles by yourself show that you have not trusted God fully with your life. It takes humility, however, to recognize that God cares, to admit your need, and to let others in God’s family help you. Sometimes we think that struggles caused by our own sin and foolishness are not God’s concern. But when we turn to God in repentance, he will bear the weight even of those struggles. Letting God have your anxieties calls for action, not passivity. Don’t submit to circumstances but to the Lord, who controls circumstances.

Psalm 118:24 (NLT)
24 This is the day the Lord has made.
    We will rejoice and be glad in it.
Additional insight regarding Psalm 118:24: There are days when the last thing we want to do is rejoice. Our mood is down, our situation is out of hand, and our sorrow or guilt is overwhelming. We can relate to the writers of the psalms who often felt this way. But no matter how the writers felt, they were always honest with God. And as they talked to God, their prayers ended in praise. When you don’t feel like rejoicing, tell God how you truly feel. You will find that God will give you a reason to rejoice. God has given you this day to live and to serve him – be glad!
1st Thessalonians 5:18 (NLT)
18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

Additional insight regarding 1st Thessalonians 5:18: Paul was not teaching that we should thank God for everything that happens to us, but in everything. Evil does not come from God, so we should not thank him for it. But when evil strikes, we can still be thankful for God’s presence and for the good that he will accomplish through the distress.

October 6th, 2025

Mammon Illness

Fr. Richard considers Jesus’ challenging statement that we cannot serve both God and money.   

Many of us, myself included, have a confused, guilt-ridden, obsessive attitude about money. There’s hardly anybody who can think in a clear-headed way about it. At the end of Luke’s parable of the so-called dishonest steward, Jesus creates a clear dualism between God and wealth, or what he calls “mammon”: “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:13). Mammon was the god of wealth, money, superficiality, and success. Jesus says, in effect, “You’ve finally got to make a choice.” Most of Jesus’ teaching is what I call nondual, but there are a few areas where he’s absolutely dualistic (either-or), and it’s usually anything having to do with power and anything having to do with money.  

Jesus is absolute about money and power because he knows what we’re going to do. Most of us will serve this god called mammon. Luke’s Gospel even describes mammon as a type of illness, as Jesuit John Haughey explained: “Mammon is not simply a neutral term in Luke. It is not simply money. It connotes disorder…. Mammon becomes then a source of disorder because people allow it to make a claim on them that only God can make.” [1] “Mammon illness” takes over when we witness all of life through the lens of short-term practical gains. We have to acknowledge that money does have the ability to serve—or solve—many of our short-term problems, but once we begin hoarding it, collecting it, multiplying it, and saving it, we become preoccupied with it. Let’s be honest about that. 

In this Gospel, I hear Jesus inviting us to think of a long-term solution. To participate in the reign of God, we have to stop counting. We have to stop weighing, measuring, and deserving in order to let the flow of forgiveness and love flow through us. The love of God can’t be doled out by any process whatsoever. We can’t earn it. We can’t lose it. As long as we stay in this world of earning and losing, we’ll live in perpetual resentment, envy, or climbing. 

Religion cannot work from a calculator without losing its very method, mind, foundation, and source. Surely this is what Jesus meant by his statement in Luke’s Gospel. Perhaps if we say it a bit differently, we can all get the point: “You cannot move around inside the world of infinite grace and mercy, and at the same time be counting and measuring with your overly defensive and finite little mind.” It would be like asking an ant to map the galaxies. St. Thérèse of Lisieux put it much more directly to a nun worried about God keeping track of her many failings: “There is a science about which [God] knows nothing—addition!” [2] The reign of God is a worldview of abundance. God lifts us up from a worldview of scarcity to infinity. Remember every part of infinity is still infinite! God’s love is nothing less than infinite. 

Redefining Security

[The rich man] said, “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”
—Luke 12:18–19 

Brian McLaren reflects on Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:15–21) as a critique of our reliance on money for security:   

This man epitomizes the confidence and narcissism of a civilization…. He talks to himself about himself, and neither listens to nor thinks of anyone else…. He asks himself what to do to maintain stability, to keep the system going, to keep the growth in GDP flowing, so he can take it easy, party, and chill. He tells himself the answer (wealth is the ultimate echo chamber): Grow! Build bigger barns to hoard more stuff…. 

A collapse in the rich man’s health interrupts his schemes for wealth…. He was rich, yes, filthy rich in a certain selfish sense. But rich toward God? Rich in wisdom to remember that he is a candle, that life is a gift, and that his flame will someday go out? Rich in caring about others, especially the poor and vulnerable, so beloved of God? He proves utterly bankrupt in all these departments. He is forever known as the rich fool…. 

Every system of self-centered civilization with its barns and banks for hoarding will inevitably collapse, the story of the rich fool reminds us. Meanwhile, … the divine ecosystem of interdependence and sharing, the holy and harmonious arrangement of life in which wildflowers and ravens live and thrive … it goes on. That’s where to put your heart. That’s where to invest your inner energies:  

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also [Luke 12:32–34]….

So, Jesus says, liquidate your capitol in the fragile, failing human system. Reinvest your energies in the larger-than-human system of life. That’s why loving your neighbors, especially your poor neighbors, is so important. Better to have less stored in your bank account and more given to those in need. Better to be poor in money and rich in generous relationships…. If you love God and neighbor, you love what matters … unlike the rich fool, who loved only himself and his money….  

If your heart is fully invested in the rich fool’s economy, the judgment that is passed upon that system is passed upon you…. But if you withdraw your consent from the rich man’s human system of wealth, if you transfer your trust to the larger system, if you seek first and foremost the divine ecosystem, you will end up with everything you need.  

Franciscan Witness and Practice

October 3rd, 2025

Freedom for a Fuller Life

Friday, October 3, 2025

Richard Rohr explores how Francis of Assisi understood the meaning of words like “sin” and “penance”:  

For St. Francis of Assisi, “penance” was not some kind of avoidant asceticism but a proactive, free leap into the problem. It’s the same freedom that we see in Jesus when he says, “You are not taking my life from me; I am laying it down freely” (John 10:18). In the opening words of his Testament, Francis brilliantly says:  

The Lord gave me, Brother Francis, thus to begin doing penance in this way: for when I was in sin, it seemed too bitter for me to see lepers. And the Lord himself led me among them and I showed mercy to them. And when I left them, what had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body. And afterwards I delayed a little and then left the world. [1]  

Francis’ phrase, “left the world,” didn’t mean leaving creation. It meant leaving what we might call the “system.” Francis left business as usual, and he began an alternative lifestyle, which at that time was called “a life of penance” or abandoning the system. He decided to focus on alleviating the needs and the suffering of others instead of self-advancement. Most of our decisions are usually based on personal, egoic preference and choice. This is the life that we are called to “leave,” the self that Jesus says must “die” to fall into our Larger Life or True Self. Freedom for both Jesus and Francis was purely and simply freedom from the self, which is precisely freedom for the world. This is so utterly different than our Western notion of freedom. In order to be free for a full and authentic life, we must quite simply be free from our smaller selves. 

Francis knew that Jesus was not at all interested in the usual “sin management” task that many clergy seem to think is their job. He saw that Jesus was neither surprised nor upset at what we usually call sin. Jesus was upset at human pain and suffering. What else do all the healing stories mean? They are half of the Gospels! Jesus did not focus on sin. Jesus went where the pain was. Wherever he found human pain, there he went, there he touched, and there he healed.  

Francis, who only ever wanted to do one thing—imitate Jesus—did the same. We can’t do that, or even imagine it, unless our first question is something other than “What do I want?” “What do I prefer?” or “What pleases me?” In the great scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter what I want. We are not free at all until we are free from ourselves. It is that simple and that hard.  

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John Chaffee 5 On Friday

1.

“Do not be discouraged. The Holy Spirit is not asleep.”

– Thomas Merton, Trappist Monk

There are days when I am optimistic, and others when I am more pessimistic.  This week has been a mix of both.

When I think about the Spirit/Holy Spirit/Holy Ghost/etc, what comes to mind most often are the words: life, movement, growth, and wind.

On my more pessimistic days, it is helpful for me to look around and be grateful for life, for the movements that are going on, for the growth I am choosing (or being subjected to), and for the gentle (or firm) breeze that reminds me that most things are utterly out of my control.

Even when I fail to notice these things, they never stop happening, and keep going about their work until I can get out of my anxious thoughts and be present to the Mystery “moving the Spheres,” as Dante writes so poetically.

2.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

– Jane Goodall, British Primatologist and Anthropologist

Jane Goodall passed away this week at the age of 91.

I remember growing up and watching the occasional documentary or recent update from the forests of the world about her work with primates, specifically, with chimpanzees.

It is remarkable to me that by such close observation of primates, she was also honing her thoughts and insights about anthropology.  I wonder what it is that working with animals helps people become so very wise about how we humans live, move, and interact.

Initially, this spot was taken by another quote, but it felt right and appropriate to highlight a quote from the good doctor Jane.

3.

“A religion that professes a concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr., Civil Rights Activist

There is no “conservative” or “progressive” Gospel.  There is not an “evangelical” one or a “social” one.  There is one Gospel that has much to say about our inner soulscapes as well as what is happening in the world around us.  To separate the two from one another is to cause a diabolical and unfortunate split where there was never supposed to be one.

4.

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen (θεαθηναι/theathenai) by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

– Jesus in Matthew 6:1

The Greek word Θεαθηναι (theathenai) is connected to the same etymological root as the English word “theater.”

This adds a whole other side to this verse for me from the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus tells the crowds and the disciples to “not practice your righteousness in front of others as if putting on a theater production.”

Dang, that’s quite a punch, isn’t it?

Jesus is not in favor of people who practice their piety, their religion, or their “faith” in a way that is applauded for their “acting the part.”  Perhaps this is the cynical side of me, but when I read these words of Jesus, I think of social media influencers and YouTube celebrities (which are our modern-day equivalent to televangelists).  I struggle with the fact that when I watch them (and yes, I sometimes do), my BS meter sounds off, and I can’t watch anymore.  Then, I can just as easily turn the microscope on myself and ask if I am ever doing performative religion as well.

My God, is there any truth in any of us?

Of course, there is truth in all of us; it is just that we have to protect it, become devout stewards of our own sincerity, honesty, and vulnerability.

5.

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.

– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Franciscan Witness and Practice

October 2nd, 2025

Gospel to Life and Life to Gospel

Thursday, October 2, 2025

Michele Dunne is the Executive Director of the Franciscan Action Network, an organization that seeks to embody Franciscan values in their work for justice for the earth and the poor. [1] In a recent issue of CAC’s the Mendicant donor newsletter, Dunne describes her deepening understanding of Franciscan witness:  

“From gospel to life and life to gospel” is a phrase from the Rule of the Secular Franciscan Order that puzzled me when I first read it. I felt called to join the Order in 2013, at a time of failure and crisis in my life. [2] As I studied the Rule, I thought I understood “from gospel to life.” I was to read the gospel of Jesus and apply what I found there to how I lived my life. But “life to gospel”? What might that mean? 

As I worked on those words from the Rule, those words worked on me over several years. Through his writings and example, St. Francis taught me about living in kinship with all humanity and all creation. My new spiritual path urged me to make time to study more deeply and practice contemplative prayer more consistently.  

My new Franciscan path also seemed to break open my heart. Hearing the growing calls for racial and economic justice, care for the earth, and many other issues during 2017–2021, I could no longer ignore them or believe they didn’t concern me. As I stepped out of my comfort zone to show solidarity—sometimes accepting legal or safety risks in doing so—certain scriptural passages glowed for me in a new way, resonating with my real-life experiences of activism and advocacy.  

For example, while I had always understood Jesus’s teaching to “take up your cross and follow me” simply as a call to bear patiently with the suffering inherent in daily life, I came to a totally different understanding after a long, frigid day spent at a climate protest in December 2019. Rereading the story (in Mark 8, Matthew 16, and Luke 9) at the urging of my friend and teacher the Rev. John Dear, I suddenly understood that Jesus was not speaking about patience with everyday suffering. As he faced escalating pressure—including from his friends—to stop speaking out against injustice, Jesus made it crystal clear that following him would require self-sacrifice, inconvenience, and possibly danger. How could I have missed that before? Maybe this new way of hearing was what “life to gospel” meant. 

The Franciscan path keeps the challenges coming but also supplies companions for the way. In 2021, I left a longtime career to join the Franciscan Action Network, where we are building an intergenerational movement for justice, peace, and creation rooted in the gospel and the examples of St. Francis and St. Clare. Our dozens of Franciscan Justice Circles across the country meet monthly in small groups, where we pray and take action together, discovering over and over again what it means to go from gospel to life and life to gospel.  

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Jesus Calling Sarah Young

Worship Me only. I am King of kings and Lord of lords, dwelling in unapproachable Light. I am taking care of you! I am not only committed to caring for you, but I am also absolutely capable of doing so. Rest in Me, My weary one, for this is a form of worship.
     Though self-flagellation has gone out of style, many of My children drive themselves like racehorses. They whip themselves into action, ignoring how they exhausted they are. They forget that I am sovereign and that My ways are higher than theirs. Underneath their driven service, they may secretly resent Me as a harsh taskmaster. Their worship of Me is lukewarm, because I am no longer their First Love.
     My invitation never changes: Come to Me, all you who are weary, and I will give you rest. Worship Me by resting peacefully in My Presence.

RELATED SCRIPTURE:

1st Timothy 6:15-16 (NLT)
15 For,
At just the right time Christ will be revealed from heaven by the blessed and only almighty God, the King of all kings and Lord of all lords. 16 He alone can never die, and he lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach him. No human eye has ever seen him, nor ever will. All honor and power to him forever! Amen.

Isaiah 55:8-9 NLT
8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD . “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Additional insight regarding Isaiah 55:8-9: The people of Israel were foolish to act as if they knew what God was thinking and planning. His knowledge and wisdom are far greater than any human’s knowledge and wisdom. We are foolish to try to fit God into our mold – to make his plans and purposes conform to ours. Instead, we must strive to fit into his plans.

Revelation 2:4 NLT
4 “But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first!

Additional insight regarding Revelation 2:4: Paul had once commended the church of Ephesus for its love for God and others (Ephesians 1:15), but many of the church founders had died, and many of the second-generation believers had lost their zeal for God. They were a busy church – the members did much to benefit themselves and the community but they were acting out of the wrong motives. Work for God must be motivated by love for God, or it will not last.

Matthew 11:28 NLT
28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Related scripture = Jeremiah 6:16)

Additional insight regarding Matthew 11:28-30: A yoke is a heavy wooden harness that fits over the shoulders of an ox or oxen. It is attached to a piece of equipment the oxen are to pull. A person may be carrying heavy burdens of (1) sin, (2) excessive demands of religious leaders, (3) oppression and persecution, or (4) weariness in the search for God.

Jesus frees people from all these burdens. The rest that Jesus promises is love, healing, and peace with God, not the end of all labor. A relationship with God changes meaningless, wearisome toil into spiritual productivity and purpose.

October 1st, 2025

Prophetic Living

It has struck me in a recurring way over my lifetime that Francis’ universal social justice agenda was to live a simple life. Otherwise, we’re always a part of the system, pleasing somebody to get some advantage or make more money. 
—Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs (podcast) 

Richard Rohr considers how the prophetic lives of Francis and Clare shaped others through their witness: 

Francis and Clare were not so much prophets by what they said as in the radical, system-critiquing way that they lived their lives. They found both their inner and outer freedom by structurally living on the edge of the inside of church and society. Too often people seek either inner freedom or mere outer freedom, but seldom—in my opinion—do people seek and find both. Francis and Clare did.  

Their agenda for justice was the most foundational and undercutting of all others: a very simple lifestyle outside the system of production and consumption (the real meaning of the vow of poverty), plus a conscious identification with the marginalized of society (the communion of saints pushed to its outer edge). In this position, we do not “do” acts of peace and justice as much as our lives themselves become peace and justice. We take our small and sufficient place in the great and grand scheme of God.  

By “living on the edge of the inside” I mean building on the solid Tradition (“from the inside”) from a new and creative stance (“on the edge”) where we cannot be co-opted for purposes of security, possessions, or the illusions of power. Francis and Clare placed themselves outside the social and ecclesiastical systems. Francis was not a priest, nor were Franciscan men to pursue priesthood in the early years of the order. Theirs was not a spirituality of earning or seeking worthiness, career, church status, moral one-upmanship, or divine favor (which they knew they already had). Within their chosen structural freedom, Francis and Clare also found personal, mental, and emotional freedom. They were free from negativity and ego. Such liberation is full gospel freedom.  

Today, most of us try to find personal and individual freedom even as we remain inside of structural boxes and a system of consumption that we are then unable or unwilling to critique. Our mortgages, luxuries, and privileged lifestyles control our whole future. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security and status determines what we can and cannot say or even think.  

When Jesus and John’s Gospel used the term “the world,” they did not mean the earth, creation, or civilization, which Jesus clearly came to love and save (see John 12:47). They were referring to idolatrous systems and institutions that are invariably self-referential and “always passing away” (see 1 Corinthians 7:31). Francis and Clare showed us it is possible to change the system not by negative attacks (which tend to inflate the ego), but simply by quietly moving to the side and doing it better!  

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Shusaku Endo: Jesus Doesn’t Need Your Defense
As a college student, I often participated in events on campus called Open Forums. They were question-and-answer sessions held in a dorm or fraternity house, where I fielded questions about faith and philosophy. Sometimes they were organized as more formal debates between me and an atheist or skeptic. Early on, I viewed myself as a defender of the faith, a next-generation apologist following in the steps of Lewis and Schaeffer.By my senior year, however, I had grown disillusioned with the Open Forums for two reasons. First, I never saw anyone argued into the kingdom of God. Of course, some people had very legitimate intellectual struggles with belief and the claims of Christianity—I had been one of them. While apologetics could lower barriers to faith, I learned that it’s only a genuine attraction to Jesus himself that lures a person in. Second, it occurred to me that my righteous attempts to defend Christ were more often a self-righteous attempt to defend myself. I came to this second realization through reading the novel Silence by Shusaku Endo. The story follows two Portuguese priests who secretly enter Japan in the seventeenth century to search for their lost mentor. Japanese Christians were severely persecuted at the time, and many were martyred. The novel explores the journey of the two young priests who were proud defenders of the faith but became broken men tempted to publicly deny Jesus. It is a beautiful and haunting novel that explores facets of faith never addressed or even acknowledged in many Christian communities today.More than anything, Endo helped me realize that Jesus is not relying upon my defense. His vindication was accomplished when the Father raised him from the dead, and it will be evident to all on a day still to come. Until then, our Lord is quite familiar with being mocked and scorned. Isaiah prophesied that he would be despised and disrespected, and the most enduring image of our faith, the cross, is a symbol of shame and rejection. Jesus was very willing to accept both, but I am not. Through Endo’s novel, I came to recognize that my spirited defense of Jesus through rhetoric and argument was, in fact, an attempt to defend my own honor and reputation on a campus where the Christian faith was largely dismissed and disrespected. There is a place for Christians to speak intelligently about their beliefs, and it is appropriate to answer critics of faith in an often hostile public square, but these efforts should never be divorced from a large dose of self-reflection. As our culture becomes increasingly post-Christian, and we seek to defend our faith, we ought to ask ourselves this essential question—Are we really seeking to defend Jesus’ honor or just our own?

DAILY SCRIPTURE
ISAIAH 53:1–6
1 PETER 2:19–25
JOHN 15:18-25


WEEKLY PRAYERJohn Stott (1921 – 2011)

Our heavenly Father, we commend to your mercy those for whom life does not spell freedom: prisoners of conscience, the homeless and the handicapped, the sick in body and mind, the elderly who are confined to their homes, those who are enslaved by their passions, and those who are addicted to drugs. Grant that, whatever their outward circumstances, they may find inward freedom, through him who proclaimed release of captives, Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.