Year: 1997

If Psalm 130 begins with the author "in the pits", it ends with a call to hope. There are two grounds for this hope. One is God's "steadfast love," God's loyalty to his promises, God's absolute commitment to keep his … Read more

If you're like me, you like quick results. If a committee votes for a certain course of action, by tomorrow I'll want to know why it has not been acted upon. One of the hardest pieces of advice Scripture gives … Read more

Psalm 130 is commonly classified as one of the "penitential psalms." The author cries to God "out of the depths." In this particular case the author's agony apparently springs from a sense of moral failure. This is no doubt partly … Read more

For the writer of Psalm 130 life was the pits. Yet even on his deepest distress, whether by instinct or by habit, he does not just cry out – he cries out to God. I write this just after hearing … Read more

A well-known and helpful book on the Psalms by Bernhard Anderson is entitled Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today. The first part of the title, of course, quotes Psalm 130:1. The second part echoes a comment … Read more

Here we are back to the heart and back to the beginning of the search for our true selves, a search that brings us face to face with the living God. "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest … Read more

Brother Roger of the Taize community once asked: Will we have hearts large enough, imaginations open enough, love burning enough to enter upon the Gospel way, to live as a people who are reconciled, without delaying a single day? … … Read more

Brother Roger, founder of the Taize community, once reflected: Every human being yearns to be loved as well as to love. It is not for nothing that the Gospel alerts us about not becoming locked up in isolation. When we … Read more

"If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them." (Christopher Morley) Maybe we should … Read more

A woman came and knocked on my door. The story she had to tell was terrible – of a daughter in danger, of terrible abuse, of helplessness, of hopelessness, of fear for the whole family – and she asked, "What … Read more