60 Seconds of Hope with Horace McMillon

Send us Fan Mail God Answers The Prayers We Don’t Know To Pray “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” - Isaiah 65:24 Sometimes life has us all twisted. I could use another phrase, but I’m not going to drop any expletives  today.  Sometimes we know something is wrong but we have no idea how to make it right. If we have an idea of how to make it right, we don’t kn...

Send us Fan Mail These Troubles Will Soon Be Forgotten  “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.” -Isaiah 65:17 Some of us are so tired, so discouraged, so overwhelmed that we feel like giving up. What’s going on within us, what’s going on in the world around us, it seems like too much sometimes. The prophetic words of Isaiah...

Send us Fan Mail Do We Trust That Our Redeemer Lives? “For I know that my redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;” - Job 19:25 Job endured. He endured pain and suffering, loss and grief, ridicule and derision. He endured his own disorientation and internal dissonance. He had no answers for life’s questions.  What made it possible for him to endure? I believe he was able to...

Send us Fan Mail Strength Comes From The Heart  “Comfort your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.” -2 Thessalonians 2: 17 Where do we find our strength? From where do we draw our power? These questions emerge from this week’s lectionary readings.  Psalm 17 emphasizes how we don’t try to become stronger through violence, manipulation, or exploitation in declaring, “As for what o...

Send us Fan Mail The Secret Of Happiness  “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live.” -Ecclesiastes 3:12 What makes for a good life? This was the question the writer of Ecclesiastes pondered.  Was it having money and power?  Was it to be revered and respected? No. They had the wealth and status to do as they wished, and they were widely respect...

Send us Fan Mail Don’t Let It Shake You “We beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.” - from 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2 The words of 2 Thessalonians were written in very troubled times. The times were so troubled that many wondered if the world was comi...

Send us Fan Mail If Our Hearts Were Put On Trial…  “If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress.” - Psalm 17:3 If our hearts were put on trial today, would they be found to be full of love?  Or would we find hidden pockets of bitterness and hate, envy and resentment?  And if all of our secrets were to be revealed to...

Send us Fan Mail Take Courage And Do The Work  “How does it look to you now? Is it not in your sight as nothing? Yet now take courage … says the LORD… take courage , all you people of the land, says the LORD; work, for I am with you , says the LORD of hosts…” - From Haggai 2:3-4 By the time this passage was written, there was almost no one left still who could even remember the good days. Things h...

Send us Fan Mail May We See The Deeds Of The Lord In Our Lifetime  “Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known.” - from Habakkuk 3:2 Habakkuk wasn’t praying for the end of the world. Rather Habakkuk prayed for its rebirth and renewal. Habakkuk did not pray for God’s wrath to be spilled out onto the world but rather for G...

Send us Fan Mail Write Down Your Vision  “Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets… For there is still a vision for the appointed time.” -from Habakkuk 2:2-3 When things are hard, when things have been hard, when there’s no sign of things getting easier, the most important thing we can hold onto is a vision for ourselves and our futures.  A vision is more than...

Send us Fan Mail True Worship Happens Outside Of Church  The writer of Isaiah 1 gave the readers the ancient world equivalent of ‘get out of here with that noise’.  “When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more! Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation-- I cannot endure solemn assem...

Send us Fan Mail When Salvation Comes “Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house…” - from Luke 19:9 When salvation comes, it can look different for all of us but it feels just as good. The Greek word translated as salvation ( Sōtēria) also means, rescued, healed, made whole, kept safe, preserved, delivered, and liberated.  Zacchaeus’s salvation looks different from the p...

Send us Fan Mail God Always Welcomes And Invites  “All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner."- Luke 19:7 I do not know the first century slang equivalent for the phrase Uncle Tom.  But in the eyes of the crowd, Zacchaeus was the worst kind of scum. He lived fat and happy collecting taxes for their Roman oppressors while so many of them...

Send us Fan Mail Separate And Climb “So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.” -Luke 19:4 There wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with the crowd Zacchaeus was in. They were all there to try and see Jesus. Perhaps some wanted to hear his wisdom and insight. Perhaps others needed his healing. Maybe others were hoping he’d bring liberation from Ro...

Send us Fan Mail Let’s Stop Blocking The View “He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature.” - Luke 19:3 Zacchaeus being a tax collector, was no doubt a less than popular figure. Even so, it does not appear that that the crowd had any particular ill will or ill intent here. They were just trying to see Jesus themselves. In the proce...

Send us Fan Mail Time To Stop Assuming The Worst About Folks  “Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." - Luke 19:8 Zacchaeus was a tax collector in league with the occupying Roman army. This was not cool in the eyes of most citizens of Jerusal...

Send us Fan Mail How To Move From Strength To Strength  “My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the LORD; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” - Psalm 84:2 Some of us are worn down and worn out. We are tired, and we are exhausted. We are disappointed. We are discouraged. We  feel about ready to give in and give up. It feels like our souls are about to faint.  The writ...

Send us Fan Mail Give From Love And Gratitude Not Greed Here’s a passage probably not many of us are familiar with: “Give to the Most High as he has given to you and as generously as you can afford. For the Lord is the one who repays, and he will repay you sevenfold. Do not offer him a bribe, for he will not accept it, and do not rely on a dishonest sacrifice, for the Lord is the judge, and with h...

Send us Fan Mail When We Are Overwhelmed By Evil “When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions.” - Psalm 65:3 Many of us know that it is better to forgive. We know it’s better to let go of our anger and bitterness instead of holding onto them. But we are overwhelmed with our pain and can’t yet seem to let go. Many of us know that we are not in the right places, doing the rig...

Send us Fan Mail Trust That Our Blessing Are Coming  “And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God.” - Deuteronomy 28:2 Why does the world today look the way it looks? Why do we treat each other the way we do? Why do we fail so often to practice kindness and compassion? Why are we stingy with our neighbors instead of practi...

Send us Fan Mail Trust That God Is For Everyone  “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my spirit.” - Joel 2:28-29 God is pouring out God’s spirit on all flesh. And all means all. Regardless of our nat...

Send us Fan Mail Trust In God’s Deliverance  “I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army that I sent against you. You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame. “ - Joel 2:25-26 Some of us have suffe...

Send us Fan Mail Trust In God’s Abundance  “The threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil.” - Joel 2:24 I’m convinced that our lack of hospitality, our lack of generosity, our envy, jealousy are rooted in fear. Specifically we fear scarcity. We fear that’s there is not enough of whatever it is to go around. We fear that we will be left out.  A life of faith...

Send us Fan Mail What’s Going On? How Can We Help? As part of my service on the Mennonite Mission Network Board of  Directors, I recently had the opportunity to visit a community on the US southern border. We wanted to better understand what’s going on and how we and other people of good will can help.  I’m convinced that the answers we get depend on the questions we ask. In seeing the U.S.’s curr...

Send us Fan Mail God’s Love Is Forever.  How About Ours? “For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations.” -Psalm 100:5 In the first story, found in the first chapter, of the first book of the Bible it says that God created humanity, male and female in the image of God. In the image of God, God created us. Our lives well lived should be reflections...