NEW E-BOOK

LeaderSHIFT: 8 Pivotal Breakthroughs of Emotionally Healthy Leaders

LeaderShift eBook

Personal Assessment

How Emotionally Healthy Are You?
Take a free 15 minute personal assessment now!

*We respect your privacy by not sharing or selling your email address.

Personal Assessment

Close

Tag Archives: children

Wonder

Wonder is one of the most important qualities we can cultivate as leaders. It is also one of the most difficult, especially amides the daily pressures and demands of life. A very gifted, godly, friend of mine, after twenty-one years of  “successfully” pastoring a mega-church, recently resigned and decided to pursue a quieter, more reflective life. He writes about his more recent learnings in a wonderful, little book called, Thursdays with Naomi. In it, he notes the learning that have emerged out of his time spent on Thursdays with his little granddaughter, Naomi. Children, like God he notes, have an amazing ability to experience the joy of every thing in each and every moment. G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, writes: It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may. Read more.

Wonder

Wonder is one of the most important qualities we can cultivate as leaders. It is also one of the most difficult, especially amides the daily pressures and demands of life. A very gifted, godly, friend of mine, after twenty-one years of  “successfully” pastoring a mega-church, recently resigned and decided to pursue a quieter, more reflective life. He writes about his more recent learnings in a wonderful, little book called, Thursdays with Naomi. In it, he notes the learning that have emerged out of his time spent on Thursdays with his little granddaughter, Naomi. Children, like God he notes, have an amazing ability to experience the joy of every thing in each and every moment. G.K. Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy, writes: It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike,. Read more.

10 Top Quotes from Elie Wiesel's Memoirs

I finished Elie Wiesel’s memoirs last night. He is a Nobel Peace Laureate who lived through the horror of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I find his writing a sharp, challenging contrast to the kind of sanitized spirituality found in most Christian leadership bookstores. We had an inexplicable confidence in German culture and humanism…We kept telling ourselves that this was, after all, a civilized people, that we must not give credence to exaggerated rumors about an army’s behavior. (27) Moshe the beadle… madness in his eyes. He talked on and on about the brutality of the killers. “Listen to me!” he would shout. “I’m telling the truth. On my life, I swear it!” But the people were deaf to his pleas. I liked him and could not bring myself to believe him. (29) Yet we practiced religion in a death camp. I said my prayers every day. On Saturday I hummed Shabbat songs at work. I. Read more.

God's Splendor as Sorrow – Final Reflection, Newtown, CT

Watching the funerals of the teachers and children this past week has been heart-wrenching for the nation. “Where is/was God?” we ask.  I close our week with words that serve me in these days. This excerpt is quoted from the Daily Office: Begin the Journey (WCA). Nicholas Wolterstorff, former theological professor at Yale, lost his twenty-five year old son to a mountain-climbing accident. He didn’t have any answers as to why God allowed such a tragedy. Who does? At one point, however, he came upon a great insight: “Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God. It is said of God that on one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one can see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps this meant that no one can see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor.”

Trusting God amidst Great Evil- Newtown, CT

I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.  (Ps. 69:1) I remember John Milton’s Paradise Lost as I looked at the pictures of the twenty 6-7 year old children who were killed last Friday. He compares the evil of history to a compost pile – a mixture of decaying substances such as animal excrement, vegetable and fruit peels, potato skins, egg shells, dead leaves, and banana peels. If you cover it with dirt, after some time it smells wonderful. The soil has become a rich, natural fertilizer and is tremendous for growing fruit and vegetables – but you have to be willing to wait, in some cases, many years. Milton’s point is that the worst events of human history that we cannot understand, even hell itself, are only compost in God’s wonderful eternal plan. Out of the greatest evil, the. Read more.

Skim

When I was in high school and elementary school, I did what most of my friends did —  I skimmed for tests. Learning the material was not important. What was important was to get a good grade, to survive, to get through it. Most Christian leaders/pastors skim today. We skim on ourselves, our self-care. We have so much to do, so many demands that we figure we can catch up on our sleep some other time. The space we need for Sabbath-keeping, replenishing our soil, reading, relaxing, etc. can happen later, some some other time. We lie to ourselves that all is okay. We skim on our relationship with God. There are sermons to prepare, calls to return, people to visit, e mails to read. So our devotional lives are weak and we carry a general cloud of guilt. We skim on our marriages and children. Our families rarely demand us out of a crisis so we. Read more.