60 Seconds of Hope with Horace McMillon

Send us Fan Mail I am not afraid. “The frowns of the world shall never discourage me, nor its smiles flatter me; for, with the help of God, I am resolved to withstand the fiery darts of the devil and the assaults of wicked men. The righteous are as bold as a lion, but the wicked fleeth when no man pursueth. I fear neither men nor devils; for the God in whom I trust is able to deliver me from the r...

Send us Fan Mail God is on the journey too. “The feeling remains that God is on the journey, too.”- Saint Teresa of Avila There is no place we can go where God is not. There is nothing we can do to make God stop loving us. Understanding this changes everything.  We don’t have to earn God’s love. We just have to receive it. We don’t have to search for God. We just have to become open to God’s prese...

Send us Fan Mail Be Kind. Just Be Kind.  “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” - Ephesians 4:32 Folks around us are fighting battles we know nothing about. Sometimes folk are fighting battles that they themselves do not understand. The best thing we can do is to practice kindness and compassion as our default response to any situation. ...

Send us Fan Mail Get Angry, But Don’t Let the Anger Get You.  “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” - Ephesians 4:26 We are going to get angry. We have a right to get angry. But we don’t want to let our anger get us.  How many times how we allowed our hurt and anger to cause us to do or say something that we regretted?  How many times have we said something really hu...

Send us Fan Mail Putting Away Our Anger “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.” - Ephesians 4:31 We want to become proactive in processing our emotions, particularly the negative ones. If we wait for them to go away on their own, they may decide to hang out with us for a long time.  We want to start by acknowledging what we feel....

Send us Fan Mail Don’t go around dropping “truth bombs”. “… speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way (into Christ).” Ephesians 4:15 It’s true that the truth will set us free, but not when it’s spoken in anger, bitterness, and malice. Our rage and frustration will drown out the truth that could edify and enrich.  Our calling and purpose is to equip one another for service, to equip...

Send us Fan Mail Embrace Joy Not Gloom “May God protect me from gloomy saints.” - Saint Teresa of Avila  Have you known any good and decent people who could nevertheless suck all the life and joy out of any situation with their constant complaining, negativity, and cynicism?  We’re going to love and accept those people too. Nevertheless, we will need to maintain appropriate emotional boundaries to...

Send us Fan Mail Just Keep Scrolling  “Conflict cannot survive without your participation.” - Wayne Dyer I’ve discovered that some of the principles for healthy social media use, are also sound spiritual principles as well.  The social media companies build their businesses around keeping us engaged. Whatever we react and respond to is what they’re going to serve us more of.  Whatever seed we plan...

Send us Fan Mail Doing the impossible  “Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” - Francis of Assisi How often do we sabotage ourselves by allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed by the scale and scope of the problems we face?  Sometimes the destination seems so hopelessly far away from us, that we never take the first step. ...

Send us Fan Mail “To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that.” - Saint Teresa of Avila  A healthy sense of spirituality gives us courage in the face of uncertainty, courage in the face of our greatest difficulties.  A person with a healthy sense of spirituality is not a Pollyanna. That person is firmly grounded in reality. However, their reality is never defined by their...

Send us Fan Mail Take heart. God is with us.  A healthy spirituality sense of spirituality gives us a sense of belonging. It gives us the sense that we are, every one of us, part of something bigger than ourselves that loves and cares for us unconditionally.  I’m convinced that most of our toxic behaviors towards others are driven by the negative emotions of fear, anger resentment, and envy. Most...

Send us Fan Mail What is worthy of our calling?  Paul’s answer isn’t what most of us  think about when we think about the word worth: “(Live) with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” -Ephesians 4:2-3 Nothing about wealth, social status or power. Nothing about looking holy or righ...

Send us Fan Mail No really, we are all children of God One of my conversation partners and beloved sisters in Christ disagrees with my view that we are all children of God. She points to the children of light/ children of darkness dichotomy that is found in the scriptures.  I believe the phase children of darkness versus children of light describes a person’s circumstance not their identity.  As i...

Send us Fan Mail Go for it now! “Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.” - Wayne Dyer There are seven days in a week. Every day has a name. None of those days are named someday or one day. If there’s anything that you want to do, see, or be, today is the day to do it or to be about working towards it. Life is a precious gift. It’s also a gift that fragile and fleeting. Let’s not take any...

Send us Fan Mail The Power Within When we stay rooted and grounded in love , we discover our power. It’s a power that allows us to do more than we’ve asked. It’s a power that allows us to do more than we’ve imagined asking.  Well intentioned people often get the order wrong. We think it’s our job to produce good fruit, to do good work. So we wear ourselves out trying to do everything we think we a...

Send us Fan Mail The Love Prayer  “We have to give from a full heart, one that is saturated with love, overflowing to others. Before we can give freely, we have to know that we are loved.” -Mother Teresa  It’s been said many times by many people that it’s not possible to pour from an empty vessel. It’s just not possible to freely give and fully love until we ourselves know that we are fully loved....

Send us Fan Mail Prayer’s purpose is to make us feel loved.  “You should pray and meditate every day, so you know that you are loved, so you feel the presence of God’s love in your life.” - Mother Teresa  The primary purpose of prayer and meditation is to connect us to that which is greater than ourselves. Some of us call this source or transcendence, some of us call this father, some mother, some...

Send us Fan Mail We are all children of the same God. “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.” -Ephesians 3:14-15 The experience of God’s love was so all encompassing and immersive that it transformed everything about how the early Jesus followers saw the world.  Whereas at one time they saw themselves exclusively as God’s people,...

Send us Fan Mail If I Am… “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” -Joan of Arc In order to become the best versions of ourselves and in order for us to reach our highest possibilities and purposes, we have to be open, humble, and self aware.  Joan of Arc’s prayer is a great one. It invites us to engage in an ongoing honest self assessment of who we are, what we are, a...

Send us Fan Mail Go catch excellence!  It’s just not possible to achieve anything of significance in life without failing along the way.  Steve Jobs was  fired from the company he founded. Michael Jordan missed many game winning shots. It took Thomas Edison around a thousand attempts to make a light bulb.  When we have failures and setbacks, the key for us is to learn and grow and try again. Our f...

Send us Fan Mail Take Time to Enjoy Life “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” - Bertrand Russell  Life is very short. Time is something that once spent, can never be replaced. Therefore, it’s important that we are very intentional in the way we use it.  In our current moment, we tend to focus on quantifiable and measurable productivity. While this is a good thing, we must also give att...

Send us Fan Mail “Look, you’re going to have to forgive everyone, including yourself.”  - Horace McMillon  (Jim Henson has a similar quote.) Every single one of us has fallen short. Every one of us has missed the mark. (Romans 3:23). We don’t say this to make anyone feel guilty. We don’t say this to shame anyone.  What happened to us wasn’t right. It wasn’t ok. What we did wasn’t right. It wasn’t...

Send us Fan Mail (And We Are All God’s People) “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” - Psalm 133:1 This verse invites us to consider two central questions. Who are God’s people?  How do we live together?  In the first creation story included in the Hebrew Scriptures, we discover that all humanity is created in God’s image. In the second we are described as descend...

Send us Fan Mail Forgiving Empowers the Forgiver “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” - Lewis B. Smedes Back when I was in middle school one of my classmates called me the “n” word, completely unprovoked. It wasn’t a convenient time to take revenge. So I kept walking.  I later retaliated in a way that made my hands appear clean. I came across his notebook...

Send us Fan Mail “What we really need is a sustained practice that rewires and transforms our hearts and minds.” - Richard Rohr  A confession of faith is meaningless unless it catalyzes us to live in such a way that we ourselves are transformed.  Paul describes this transformation by the renewing of our minds. (Romans 12) Paul’s verb tense suggests that this is an ongoing process for us. Richard R...