One way our Christian spirituality can be understood and experienced is through prepositions: • Christ is for you – he poured out his life for you. • Christ is with you – he walks alongside you. • Christ is in you – he lives inside you. • Christ is through you – he lives his…

Simon & Garfunkel sang their ballad: I’ve built walls, a fortress deep and mighty, that none may penetrate. I have no need of friendship. Friendship causes pains. It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain. I am a rock. I am an island. Truth be told: That is a despairing song. No one is a rock…

A little girl and her mother were talking as they walked out of a church. The mother asked her daughter how she liked the worship service that day. The girl replied that she thought it was good, but she was a little confused. She said, “The pastor said that God was bigger than we are….

Unlike the followers of Confucius or Buddha or Mohammed, followers of Christ have a different center point. Those other leaders are external. Jesus, our Lord and Savior, is internal. Christ has come to live within his people. He has come to live within every believer. He indwells us. That is the uniqueness of the Christian…

Donna and I often go walking in the morning about 2½ miles down through MacNeil Park along the East River. We see men fishing, LaGuardia Airport, and the Manhattan skyline. We pace ourselves walking side-by-side and talking together. That’s the way it is with God. As we walk in relationship with God, he walks with…

I read of a man who uses the Latin words pro nobis for his cell phone password. It means “for us”. Those two Latin words are emotional for him, because after walking through deep personal pain, true healing came when he learned that God is “for us”. After his parents’ divorce, he assumed that God…

When Jesus “approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it” (Luke 19:41). He later prayed: “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20). Did his tears and prayers make a difference? After 3½ years of sacrificial service, one of…

When we think about cities, we generally think about government and corporations and institutions. Another way to look at the cities is to see individual people who have great needs. People don’t realize that without God in their lives, they are like the movie title “dead men walking”. Perhaps we should be praying that people…

How do we respond to our City? Good things happen. And we celebrate. But bad things happen too. And we grieve. One day when Jesus “approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it” (Luke 19:41). Jerusalem had been given the greatest gift of all, God incarnate. But they rejected him. Jesus had come…

How does God look at the cities? At NYC? At the borough of Queens, where our church has been called by God to serve? Did you know? Queens is one of the most ethnically diverse urban areas in the world. The percentage of people in Queens who are foreign born is 48.5%. Queens has more…