60 Seconds of Hope with Horace McMillon

Send us Fan Mail 60 Seconds of Hope: God Wants To See Us Flourish  “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” - Luke 12:32 In the previous chapter, Jesus gives us a model prayer which includes our praying, “May your kingdom come.” The Kingdom of God in the gospels represents a state of individual and collective wellbeing. We have peace wit...

Send us Fan Mail 60 Seconds of Hope: Seek A Hire Purpose  “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…” - Colossians 3:1 What is our purpose? What is our calling? What are our gifts? What are our resources? What are our skills? What is our potential? How can we be a blessing? How can we make a difference?  We must never become so busy with the mundane that we forget abo...

Send us Fan Mail 60 Seconds of Hope: God Doesn’t Come In Wrath  “I will not execute my fierce anger… for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.” - Hosea 11:9 The book of Hosea is not the most family friendly book in the Bible. But this is perhaps for another reflection. Hosea portrays God as one who relentlessly pursues humanity and desires nothing but th...

Send us Fan Mail From Meaninglessness To Hope “I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun, and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.” - Ecclesiastes 1:14 Most of the things that we spend our time worrying about, stressing over, don’t matter. Even we should live to become very accomplished, our accomplishments will be forgotten. The things we built today, will one day fall apart. Even i...

Send us Fan Mail 60 Seconds of Hope: Our Daily Prayer Loving God, in whom we live and move and have our being, give us a sense of your presence, of the sacred and the holy. Give us a sense of your love. Fill us with a sense of awe and wonder, with gratitude and appreciation.  Let us create and sustain a world where no one fears not being able to get enough to eat, or a not having a place to sleep,...

Send us Fan Mail Trust In God’s Care: Prayer Part 9 “If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" - Luke 11:13 No matter how faithful we are, no matter how hard we pray, we do not always get our preferred outcomes. Sometimes, like Jesus, we pray to let this cup pass us (Matthew 26:3...

Send us Fan Mail Put Everything Into It: Prayer Part 8 “So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” - Luke 11:9 Prayer is not a passive activity. It’s true, as the scriptures say, that some situations can only be addressed by us through prayer and fasting. Nevertheless, prayer usually requires us to put relentless and c...

Send us Fan Mail Stop Cheering for the Apocalypse: Prayer Part 7 “And do not bring us to the time of trial." - from Luke 11:4 There are far too many people who use the prophetic warnings found in the scriptures as the basis of their own fantasy revenge stories against their enemies, against the people they consider evil, against the people they just don’t like.  Yes, the prophetic voices repe...

Send us Fan Mail The Part About Forgiving Everyone: Prayer Part 6 “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” - from Luke 11:4 Forgiving others can be really hard for because they usually don’t deserve it and we just don’t want to do it. There are also many misconceptions around forgiveness that we need to correct.  Forgiveness doesn’t require us to endure abuse or...

Send us Fan Mail Forgive Us Our Collective Debt: Prayer Part 5 Many of us live in such individualistic societies that when we hear the phrase “And forgive us our sins…” from Luke 11:4, what we actually hear is ‘forgive me my sins.’ But the concept of sin in the scriptures is closely intertwined with the concepts of peace, justice, and societal wellbeing. These concepts in the Bible are never solel...

Send us Fan Mail Forgive Us Our Sins: Prayer Part 4 “And forgive us our sins…” from Luke 11:4 We don’t need to hold onto guilt and shame. At most we should treat them like a person does the warning light in a vehicle. Stop, assess what the problem is, address it as best you can, and move on. Seeking forgiveness is the human version of this process.  There are at least three types of sins or shortc...

Send us Fan Mail Give Us All Our Daily Bread: Prayer Part 3 “Give us each day our daily bread.” - Luke 11:3 The first portion of the prayer is to give us an expanded awareness of the spiritual, of the sacred and the holy in our everyday lives. The second portion is to increase our determination and desire to see a world filled with equity and justice for everyone. This third portion focuses us on...

Send us Fan Mail It May Be Crazy, But It’s Not Too Late “Maybe, it's not too late, to learn how to love and forget how to hate" Crazy Train - Ozzy Osbourne There are those who are convinced that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. And then there are those who look at this same world with the hope and courage to say, ‘Yes, but maybe it’s not too late.” The first group lives in re...

Send us Fan Mail Longing For A Better World: Prayer Part 2 “ May your kingdom come.” -from Luke 11:2 After we pray for God to gives us a sense of the sacred and the holy in our everyday lives, after we develop a sense of reverence for the world God is creating and sustaining, we then shift our focus towards our longing for God’s preferred world to become our very own.  The kingdoms of this world a...

Send us Fan Mail Every Place Sacred, Everything Holy: Prayer Part 1 “When you pray, say: Father, may your name be revered as holy” - from Luke 11:2 The model prayer that Jesus taught his disciples in Luke begins with our reverence, with our desire to have an expanded sense of the sacred within and around us.  We live in a seemingly secular world. The definition of secular here that I’m using means...

Send us Fan Mail How We Thrive  “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.” - Psalm 52:8 A brief web search reveals that olive trees live for a long time and are able to be and remain productive even under harsh circumstances.  The psalmist declares that our trusting in the steadfast love of God enables us to be like these trees. ...

Send us Fan Mail There Is No Nationalism in Christianity  These are the words that were spoken as some of the earliest Christians were baptized into Christ: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” - Galatians 3:28 The ancient world of the Mediterranean of this time was highly polarized and divi...

Send us Fan Mail Pass Me Not: Inviting The Presence of God “He said, "My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant.” - Genesis 18:3 We don’t know exactly what Abraham was feeling 24 years after he and Sarah gave up their comfortably settled lives to pursue a bigger vision  and nothing had happened yet.  Doubt? Uncertainty? Had he heard it right? Had he made the right choices...

Send us Fan Mail In Due Season  “Then one said, "I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son." - Genesis 18:10 It is hard to wait. It is hard to wait for our needs to be met, our expectations fulfilled , and our dreams achieved. It’s even harder to wait when we don’t have the details of how, where, and when.  We are going to be tempted to give up hope....

Send us Fan Mail Love Is Not A Liability  “But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" - Luke 10:29 The attorney who asked Jesus about how we experience eternal life already knew the answer to the question: Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.  But like many good attorneys, he was interested in defining the limits of his liabili...

Send us Fan Mail What Do We Really Need? “…But few things are needed--indeed only one.” - from Luke 10:42 From the story of Mary and Martha, two sisters who were also followers and disciples of Jesus. Martha was so overwhelmed and frustrated trying to do all the things she thought she needed to do, that she couldn’t take the time to enjoy his company or hear his lesson.  Mary on the other hand, de...

Send us Fan Mail When It’s Good To Be Unapologetic  “She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus's feet and listened to what he was saying.” - Luke 10:39 Jesus had many disciples or students, not just twelve. Many of them were women. Of all the disciples named in the New Testament, Mary is one of my favorites.  Women in that society were not as free to drop everything and travel around with...

Send us Fan Mail Prioritize What Matters. Let The Rest Go.  “But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed.” - from Luke 10:41-42 Go, go, go. Rush, rush, rush. Do, do, do. Many of us live fast paced lives in a fast paced world. And there’s nothing wrong with staying busy and productive unless we begin to feel overwhelmed,...

Send us Fan Mail How Do We Know If We Are Doing The Right Things?  “He leads the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness…” from Psalm 25:9-10 How do we decide what we should do? How do we respond to the problems we have? How do we choose the pathways we walk? How do we know if we are doing the right things?  The answer s...

Send us Fan Mail How To Live Joyfully  “… So that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light.” - from Colossians 1:11-12 At first glance it appears that the author of Colossians has placed the adverb “joyfully” in a very odd spot… We had just received the challenge, maybe even burden of l...