It may surprise you to know this is quite common. Among every writing by the most important and influential Christian thinkers and theologians and leaders, there are stories and journals of paralyzing doubts and fears. It's part of the whole journey to spiritual maturity.

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The pastor preached a gospel sermon of hope and resurrection. The worship was inspiring. AsI left, I felt something in my chest, a familiar and indescribable twinge, as though I had accidentally walked into a beautiful hidden room full of old treasures from an earlier life. It was hope.

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We are in a profoundly toxic public moment. But I will remind us that down on the ground, there is far more hope and light than you’d think from watching your preferred media. I’d suggest we let our children and teachers remind us again of who we are.

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As Lent begins today, reflections on the life and words of Thomas Merton. Amid the chaos of ultranationalism and disruption, we need to grow deeper, not more distracted. Elton Trueblood told us, "We shall never have a better world until we have better persons in it."

In the insanity of this present moment, finding inner peace is not an escape, nor a contradiction. It is essential, to be able to hear thaT inner voice that will enable us to sift wheat from chaff, sense from nonsense, and hear the moral imperative that may spur us on to the right action rather than frantic and superficial distraction.

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An unforgettable day. But I was most touched by something his daughter said that night. She told us a little-known fact—that part of his childhood was spent in a children’s home. His family was disconnected by life. She said one of the reasons he loved sports teams so much was that family life had been hard for him. At the park, though, no matter who you were, or even what you had done, as long as you had the price of admission, you could get in.

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In other words, unity of heart, spirit and love can exist even though we must have differences that will take longer to resolve. We begin with this willingness to know a fellow Christian’s heart and build upon the possibility of fellowship. It does not mean give up our convictions. But we must begin with the hardest and highest call Jesus gave to us—to love one another as He loved us. That is not what we do once we have worked out all our disagreements, our differences or our hurts with one another. Forgiveness itself is born out of obedience to the Savior’s call to love one another.

That is what I wrote in 2009. I stand by it. If you are willing to take my hand and do good with me, come on. If our hearts are one, even if all else is “not yet,” then give me your hand. This is the miracle of Christian community, and I would add, the hope of an angry, hostile and troubled world.

That was Jimmy Carter’s best instinct.

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I want you to consider this: three astrologers came from Persia, without knowing anything about who they were dealing with in Herod. The salvation of the world lay innocently in the arms of his mother, nothing to protect him from the power of the state. His fate depended on these strangers and what they were to make of a dream they had that likely woke one of them up in the middle of the night with an uneasy feeling.

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Cryptic and mysterious messages begin coming through the unlikeliest of messengers: an elderly woman in a nursing home. Crowds flock to see her, and experts try to determine what causes it. The local ministers are perplexed. Is it the medication? Dementia? Wishful thinking?

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