A rendering of Psalm 2, a prayer in the midst of the world’s noise that turns our attention to God’s Messiah.
Category: Prayer
Psalm 3
A rendering of Psalm 3, a prayer when things feel like they’re so bad it’s hard to sleep.
Psalm 4
Here’s my rendering of Psalm 4. But first a few thoughts about poetry and the difficulty of taking something several thousand years old and offering it in an American setting in 21st century English. Poetry […]
Oh, inverted world!
When the world goes upside-down, so too does our relationship with God. It’s an important but temporary shift the Psalms teach us how to navigate.
Psalm 1
Below is my rendering of Psalm 1. I’m considering including my own renderings of the Psalms in my book A User’s Guide to Having a Soul. (Here are my comments on Psalm 1.) Let me know […]
Betrayed
When the letters started circulating, my Dad didn’t know who was sending them. Their slander was anonymous, pot shots on his character taken by an unknown sniper. Eventually, he figured it out. But by then […]
The blame game
The blame game has no winners. It also has no shortage of players. Fingers are pointed. Questions are asked. But nothing is ever accomplished. The main question asked in the blame game is the “why” […]
When life slaps us across the face
I need a wake up call every now and then. Not a literal wake up call; I’ve got an alarm on my phone for that. But I need to be awakened from the soul slumber […]
The importance of words
The most dangerous weapon in the world requires no license, is accessible to almost every person you know, is used wildly without discretion, is regulated by no government, and causes damage to uncounted millions on […]
Be still
I was on the floor of our apartment, unable to get up. My lower back was clenched in spasms of pain. The agony was so great, I could hardly move. When I went to see […]
When success becomes failure
When I became a pastor, the congregation I started serving had been on a slow but steady decline for more than 40 years. There had been no mass exodus along the way, but church records […]
The great equalizer
I’ve seen so many dead bodies this past year that I’ve lost count — at least forty and among them my Mom. Death is a bad joke. It’s a riddle that confounds us all. There’s […]
A user’s guide to having a soul
I have been accustomed to call this book, I think not inappropriately, “An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul,” for there is not an emotion of which anyone can be conscious that is […]
Thirsty for God
The ten-mile run was under the pummeling heat of the central Oregon desert sun, some of it slowing to a hands-and-knees scramble up 45-degree inclines. Interspersed throughout the race were numerous obstacles, several of which […]
Striking the Rock
“Don’t strike the rock!” The hand-written note was taped to my desk where I would see it every day. I was pastoring a congregation going through significant change and I knew that with the pushback […]
Soulsick
Sometimes the weight of the world comes crashing down on us. And sometimes we deserve it. Sometimes, we’ve done something wrong or even a whole series of things wrong and the consequences have piled up […]
The source of goodness in a world of suffering
Evil abounds. When we look around at the world, it’s easy to ask, “Why is there so much suffering and injustice?” But when we look a bit closer, we find a question hiding beneath the […]
Innocence & guilt & the only satisfaction for suffering
Where does the line between innocence and guilt lie? In some regards, we’re all complicit in this interwoven world, where a bargain buy at Target is made by sweat shop labor in Cambodia. And in […]
Shattered
I’ve broken a lot of bowls and plates and glasses and such over the years. I’ll never forget how mad my Mom got when she opened a cupboard and out tumbled a pitcher I’d put […]
Praying our social media
In the last decade, social media has gone from a novelty to a fixture in most of our lives. With the car and airplane, radio and recorded music, movies and televised entertainment, computers, and phones […]
The necessity of plagiarism in prayer
We’re all beginners when it comes to prayer.* And hopefully we always remain amateurs in our praying, since the word “amateur” originated from the French word for “lover.” There aren’t many of us who like […]
Celebration & a long friendship with God
Immediate friends are a lot of fun. But long-time friendships are deep and deserve regular celebrations. When my wife threw a party for my 50th birthday, she pulled together an incredible group of people who […]
Restoring a prayerful imagination
Your imagination is the most important part of who you are. Imagination and soul are deeply integrated, giving you personality and making you unique among all humans throughout history. Without imagination, there is no “you,” there […]
Living and praying as Image of God
Where does human value come from? What makes us so special? We assume the world belongs to us and is here for us to do with as we will. And so we eat whatever we […]
Yahweh
I used to be bad with names, and I was OK with it. That’s until I met Ray. Ray and I were slated to direct a middle school retreat at Lakeside Bible Camp, where we […]
Uncensored prayer
I’m a heretic. There are things I believe about God which are wrong. But they’re wrong in all the right ways. You’re a heretic, too. There are things that are true about God which are […]
Facing fear
Fears come in all shapes and sizes. Some fears grip us by the throat, suffocating us. Some fears climb up on our backs, weighing us down as they accumulate. But all our fears have one […]
When life gets hostile
There’s something delicious in mocking or frustrating authority. Most of our sit-coms are based on it. Dre in Black-ish is constantly being foiled by his family and by his circumstances. Michael Scott in The Office is continually […]
Prayer that gets me out of myself
“Blessed to be a blessing.” It’s a bit of a Christian cliché, but it’s true nonetheless. It gets at the heart of what God is doing in the world and of how we participate in […]
Entering into the Big Story in prayer
There are some stories other people have told me that are so vivid in my imagination, it’s as if I was there, as if those things happened to me. My wife tells a story about […]
From weapon words to worship words
Can you hear them? They talk about us Telling lies Well, that’s no surprise Can you see them? See right through them They have no shield No secrets to reveal It doesn’t matter what they […]
Thirsty prayer
O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water (Ps. 63:1). Those words […]
Where the soul finds rest
She had seemed so nice. She was always so warm and friendly and she asked such great questions, drawing out unguarded thoughts. But as I watched her turn on her mother and then family and […]
When I feel far from God
There are times when God seems just about as far away as possible. I feel alone and even with crowds around me, the world feels empty. There are times when God feels as close as […]
Breath prayers
I was asked for a prayer to help someone focus himself, to center himself as he faces death from numerous physical failings. And so I gave him five “breath prayers” pulled from the Scriptures. Here […]
The problem of perspective
Living behind my eyes and ears, I am stuck with seeing and hearing the world from my limited perspective. Sometimes, I’m able to add my perspective and help others see things more clearly. But too […]
How long, God? The waiting is killing me!
Pain can feel eternal. Suffering slows the clock to a crawl. In the hospital where I work, I see people in deep pain on a regular basis. Physical pain that so fills the senses it’s […]
Let it be
When Paul McCartney wrote The Beatles’ song “Let It Be,” he may have been thinking of his own mother Mary who died when he was 14 and not the the mother of Jesus, but he […]
Sleeping in the face of fear
Life is hard enough with all of its pressures and demands from outside of our homes, but when the dividing lines which fracture our lives run through our families, the stress can break us. The […]
The psalm that saved us on 9/11
It was September 11, 2001. We’d been woken up by a phone call and a crying voice on the other end, telling us a plane had flown into a building in New York City. And […]
40: More than just a U2 psalm
I was a sophomore in high school when I started listening to U2, with the release of their War album. As has been their pattern, the band ends the album with a hymn of sorts. […]
An integrated life in a disintegrating world
How I live and how I worship need to be the same. I need to be the same me when I’m praying as when I’m playing. If there are two Petes, I’m in trouble. But […]
The heart of Thanksgiving
I love eating and Thanksgiving is easily the best eating day of the year as far as I’m concerned. And with its leftovers that stretch over the following week, my joy is good food is […]
Praying our sicknesses
The most miserable experiences in my life include being sick. I’m grateful I don’t get sick often, but when I do get something, I tend to go down hard. I can vividly recall the semi-madness […]
Hey God! Can you hear me?
Occasionally, my daughter will call me by my full name. Generally, my kids call me Papa, but when I hear her say my full name, I know that she’s been calling for me for a […]
Got silence?
The fruit of silence is prayer; The fruit of prayer is faith; The fruit of faith is love; The fruit of love is service; The fruit of service is peace. These are the words that […]