Dear friends,

Today is the first Sunday of Advent and the beginning of the sacred Christmas season. Advent is a Latin word that means “coming” or “entering in.” As you can see, it’s the root of our word “adventure” or the start of something new. Most simply, then, Advent is the holy time when we remember and enter in to God’s coming to us in the birth of Jesus.

Today I want to reflect on a simple but profound question. When God adventures and comes in person to earth, how does God come? I want to draw your attention to three aspects of God’s coming in the Christmas story.

First, God comes with patience. 

In the journey of God’s coming, there are hundreds of years of anticipation and waiting. Think of the prophets who are quoted in the stories of Jesus’s birth.

Isaiah, the prophet who spoke of the Messiah being born to a young woman, lived seven hundred years before Jesus was born... Read More

Dear friends,

The heartbreaking violence in Israel-Palestine hit very close to home on Saturday. A few miles away from where I grew up in Illinois, a six-year old boy named Wadea al-Fayoume was murdered.

What was this child’s crime?

Wadea was a Palestinian Muslim. On Saturday, he and his 32-year-old mother Hanaan were at home when their landlord, Joseph Czuba, brutally attacked them. He stabbed Wadea to death and tried to kill Hanaan, seriously injuring her. Reports indicate that Czuba believed this little boy and his mom were dangerous – simply because they were Palestinian Muslims. Mirroring the atrocious violence in Israel-Palestine, he attacked them with a military-style knife. The FBI is investigating this murder as a hate crime.

Sadly, Czuba had several crosses displayed on the property where he attacked precious Wadea and Hanaan. Somehow this “Christian” landlord believed that publicly memorializing the violent murder of Jesus and then violently murdering a small child were not incompatible. This breaks my heart to its core... Read More

Dear friends,

Violence and grief are surging in Israel-Palestine, the land where Jesus lived and taught, was murdered and rose again.

As blood and tears flow, the wisdom and beauty of Jesus’s spiritual practice impresses itself on my humanity once again. Jesus designed this prayer in the fires of his generation’s high-conflict. Today in ours, it glows in the heat and shows us the way of peace. 

I find hope in Jesus’s practice: 

“Our Father” 

God is our Parent — equally the Parent of Israelis and Palestinians, of estranged family members and factory workers, of the living and the dead. Of all people and all nonhuman creation. God says to us, “You are my beloved children; I delight in you.” 

In the presence of our Father, we are family, not enemies. To open our consciousness to God is to remember that we are we — inseparably connected, equal in value, children of our Father and siblings to one another. 

“Hallowed be your name”

We cannot weaponize G-d for any human project or power... Read More

Dear friends,

I’m delighted to share that my video course “Neighbor-Love” is now fully available for free on YouTube.

This seven-lecture course dives deep into the history, spirituality, and contemporary practice of neighbor-love. It’s core message? We’re all fundamentally connected, equally precious in value, and invited by God to make love the very center of our lives.

Each lecture unfolds through several short videos – typically between two and five minutes long. This bite-sized pacing keeps the feast light and lets you sample what looks interesting to you.

Neighbor-love is such a beautiful, hopeful, transformative way of being human. It plots a thought-provoking story of spiritual and cultural revolution, leading to historic innovations like public hospitals and human rights. Jesus promised, “Love God and your neighbor, and you will flourish” (Luke 10:28). I hope this course energizes your faith and flourishing as we write together today’s chapter of neighbor-love.

In the course, I delve into many of our most inspiring teachers and practitioners – from Jesus to St... Read More

Dear friends,

A woman named Suzen recently reached out and told me a bit of her story. She describes herself as a “Mexican mama” with a love for storytelling. I was so inspired, and Suzen generously agreed to let me share her experience with you.

This summer, Suzen and her husband Chris heard about my book Flourishing on the Edge of Faith while listening to a podcast. They were preparing for a road trip, and they decided to read it together as they traveled.

Unsettling Us-vs-Them 

The first chapter stuck with Suzen. It’s all about how Jesus teaches us to call God “Our Father.” Suzen grew up praying the “Our Father” and experienced it as a dusty “man-made ritual.” But Jesus’s invitation was surprising and life-changing, in his context and ours still today.

The first people Jesus invited to call God “our Father” came from wildly different backgrounds. Many of them looked at one another with deep suspicion, frustration, and even hatred... Read More