60 Seconds of Hope with Horace McMillon

Send us Fan Mail The Difference Between Honoring and Obeying  “Son, always do what’s right. Even if I tell you to do something wrong, do what’s right.” - my dad, The Rev. Horace G. McMillon, jr.  My father’s instruction to me gave me a very different insight on a verse that is sometimes used for mischief: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’”...

Send us Fan Mail Dominion to Care and Serve not Use and Exploit  “You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;” - from Psalm 8:6 When we have toxic minds we tend to hear and read things in toxic ways. Toxic thinking leads to toxic living, leads to outcomes.  The unrenewed mind hears the word dominion,  as domination and control. The toxic mind understands having dominion as having th...

Send us Fan Mail You Are Amazing!  “You have made them (humans)  a little lower than God and crowned them with glory and honor.” - Psalm 8:5 You are amazing. You are incredible. You are spectacular. You are truly special (and I mean in a good way). How do you feel about these affirmations? Do they make you feel uncomfortable? Do you deflect? Is your first impulse to diminish or deny them?  What if...

Send us Fan Mail We Don’t Know “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” - John  16:12 We want to know. We want certainty. We want to be in control. Not knowing the what, where, when, how, and whys makes us afraid. It terrifies many of us. And we seldom make good choices when we are driven by fear.  The reality is this: our best knowledge and understanding is partial,...

Send us Fan Mail We Are Seen “What are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” Psalm 8:4 Compared to the scale and scope of the universe, we are not even as big as a single grain of sand on the beach. The longest human lives lived are not even as long a candle flicker against the backdrop of eternity.  Yet the ancient witnesses declare that all of us are fully seen an...

Send us Fan Mail Love Makes Hope Possible  “hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts…” - from Romans 5:5 There’s a direct correlation between our capacity to love and our ability to hope.  When our hearts are filled with God’s love, we understand that we are loved unconditionally, without hesitation or reservation. When our hearts are filled with God’s...

Send us Fan Mail How We Overcome Hardship  “Affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” from Romans 5:3-4 Hardships and struggles are part of the human condition. But we must never allow ourselves to be defined by them. We must not allow ourselves to be limited by them. We must not allow hardship to become the main character in the stories we tell...

Send us Fan Mail Not Everyone Will Believe in You “But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine." - Acts 2:13 On the day of their breakthrough, on the day of their miracle, on the day when God was moving mightily in their lives, and they were speaking the truth, there were people who still didn’t believe in them.  Despite all the evidence in their favor, some folks held th...

Send us Fan Mail Why Are We Building? “Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves;” - Genesis 11:4 The story of Babel is the ancient scripture writer’s account of how humanity came to be so divided and unable to understand one another.  Up until this point humanity had been on one accord and capable of acc...

Send us Fan Mail We Are Family  “…You received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" It is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God..” from Romans 8:15-16 We have many identities, many ways of understanding ourselves, many ways of relating to the world. We use our identities to help us navigate through life. We identify ourselves as indivi...

Send us Fan Mail Don’t Be a Slave to Fear “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear..” - from Romans 8:15 In the Apostle Paul’s teaching, the gift of God is the gift of freedom. We are no longer slaves to our anger and bitterness. We no longer have to stay stuck in cycles of abuse, despair, and dysfunction. More than anything, we are no longer slaves to our fear.  Paul pr...

Send us Fan Mail The Power of We “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” - Acts 2:1 There is great value in our personal reflections and in our private devotions. We see over and over in the Gospels Jesus slipping away for a little time for himself, to pray, reflect, and rest.  Nevertheless, the story of Pentecost reminds us of the power of community, the power o...

Send us Fan Mail Holy Fire: How We Live Life with Passion and Purpose  “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” - Acts 2:3 The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives enables and inspires us to lead lives filled with passion and purpose.  We no longer get up just because we woke up. We live each day with appreciation as we embrace connection wi...

Send us Fan Mail Don’t Let Anyone Weaponize Your Religion  “But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities.” - Acts 16:19 The owners of the slave girl were mad about the loss of money. So, they wanted to punish Paul and Silas. They needed the authorities and the crowd to do their dirty work f...

Send us Fan Mail My Daily Prayer Dear God, I’m Trusting You. I refuse to be afraid anymore.  I will follow the pathway before me as you guide me. I will walk through the doors that you open and not fret any doors that remain blocked or locked.  I’m trusting you to connect me with the people, and resources, and to bring me to the places where I cannot only survive but thrive. I trust you to restore...

Send us Fan Mail Understanding and Being Understood: A Gift of the Spirit  “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them… When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken.” - Acts 2 verses 4 & 6.  We come from different backgrounds. We’ve had different experie...

Send us Fan Mail Why Love Is the Greatest Spiritual Gift “ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” - 1 Corinthians 13:13 Faith is a powerful gift. It is the certainty of an outcome that we feel deep down in our bones when we don’t have sufficient proof or evidence. It is the substance that gives us the tenacity to keep going.  Hope is a powerful gift....

Send us Fan Mail Not Every Disaster Leads to Disaster  “When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself…” - Acts 16:27 The earthquake had destroyed the prison. The shackles were broken. The doors were open. The prisoners he was in charge of, he presumed were escaped. The consequences he was about to face having failed the Romans in his mi...

Send us Fan Mail What Did They Sing? What Did They Pray? “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them” - Acts 16:25 Paul and Silas had been arrested, stripped, beaten, shackled, and put in the deepest most secure part of the jail. Late into the night they began to sing and pray.  What did they sing? What did they pray? The text give...

Send us Fan Mail What Do We Need to Remember? What Do We Need to Learn? “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit…will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.” - from John 14:26 The Holy Spirit teaches us. The Holy Spirit reminds us. What do we need to remember? What do we need to learn? While that is a long list for most of us, there is a foundational truth that most of us ne...

Send us Fan Mail Turn Around and Let Go “…repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations…” -from Luke 24:47 Repent means to turn around and change direction. Some of us are doing the right things for the wrong reasons. Some of us our doing the wrong things for the right reasons. And some of us are doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons.  Repentance means…we...

Send us Fan Mail Seeing with the Eyes of Our Hearts  “so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may perceive what is the hope to which he has called you” - from Ephesians 1:18 In contemporary times we see the heart and the mind as opposites. Our minds tell us one thing. Our hearts tell us something else. We engage in a type of dualistic or dichotomous thinking.  It was less so in the a...

Send us Fan Mail Life’s Not a Competition  “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am making my way someone else steps down ahead of me." - John 5:7 This story is as much about how wrong assumptions and negative comparisons keep as stuck as it is about a supernatural healing.  The man assumed that he had to be first into the waters when the angel...

Send us Fan Mail Finding Peace by Asking, Seeking, and Trusting “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” - John 14:27 Peace… After developing the ability to love and the capacity and willingness to forgive, I believe having peace may be the most important spiritual gift.  How do we...

Send us Fan Mail Every Day Sacred, Everywhere Holy “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”- Revelation 21:22 We build or churches, and temples, and mosques… We set aside certain days and times… We keep our customs and traditions and perform our rituals in order to help us experience the sacred, in order to help us experience divine transcendent pres...