60 Seconds of Hope with Horace McMillon

Send us Fan Mail Dear God, In this time of chaos and uncertainty, where divisions are high and fear runs rampant, We pray that you center us in your love, center us in your peace, center us in your hope.  Do not allow despair or anxiety to disempower us. We pray instead that you give us the determination to do the things we can do to make the world a better place.  In addition to the things we can...

Send us Fan Mail Let me sow love. “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.” - Francis of Assisi It’s easy to become overwhelmed by all the negativity around us in the world. It’s easy to fall into despair when we comprehend the scale of injustice and inequality.  Too often we have a tendency to stand frozen looking for somebody, somewhere to do something....

Send us Fan Mail Prepare, Prepare, Prepare “Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.” - Robert H. Schuller  My father used to keep a pretty big garden, much bigger than my mother would have preferred. Because when the harvest time came, we always had way more food than we could almost give away much less eat.  The harvest was pretty spectacular. What was not spectac...

Send us Fan Mail Does our religion bring joy? From time to time, we all need to do an alignment check. We have to ask ourselves if what we are doing is working for us both individually and collectively.  When it comes to our religion and spirituality, if it’s not helping us become more loving, more patient, more peaceful, and more joyful we need to recalibrate. If our religion and spiritually isn’...

Send us Fan Mail Your past is not your future. Some of us have done some things that we are really not proud of. Maybe most of us have.  But who we were yesterday doesn’t have to control what we do today or who we become tomorrow.  No better example of this than the Apostle Paul. Prior to his spiritual experience on the road to Damascus, his religious understanding and practices caused him to pers...

Send us Fan Mail What’s Your Vision?  “I am not afraid... I was born to do this.” - Joan of Arc When we believe in our calling, when we believe in our purpose, when we believe in our mission, fear cannot stop us.  Yesterday, I used the example of Jesus. I know some of y’all were thinking, ‘ but yeah he’s Jesus’. Joan of Arc was a 17 year old peasant girl who so believed in her vision that she rall...

Send us Fan Mail Let your purpose be bigger than your obstacles. “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.” John 12:27 Jesus faced the very troubling prospect of arrest, torture and execution. The path that he had chosen in non violently confronting corrupt and exploitative religious and political institut...

Send us Fan Mail Embrace Joy “It is not fitting, when one is in God's service, to have a gloomy face or a chilling look.” - Francis of Assisi Some of the old pastors I was around growing up use to say that some folk are so heavenly bound that they ain’t no earthly good.  (Old… Shucks, I’m older now than many of them were then. But I digress.)  The point is that this life is gift. Maybe not ev...

Send us Fan Mail It’s who we are when we get there. Amos is one of the more interesting figures in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the eyes of the world he was a regular nobody from nowhere. He tended his herds and he tended his trees.  He left that behind, or at least set it aside when he felt called to deliver a sobering message to his larger society. Namely, that they had become unjust and a result t...

Send us Fan Mail Believe that you are worthy. “Self-worth comes from one thing - thinking that you are worthy.” - Wayne Dyer Not everyone had the type of experience I had growing up in the church or in organized religion. Growing up in the church, provided me with a sense of belonging. The teachings I heard there and at home laid the foundations for my self confidence and my self esteem.  Too many...

Send us Fan Mail Live in hope not hurt.  “Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.” - Robert Schuller  Life is hard. We have all been hurt. Some have been hurt in nearly unspeakable and sometimes unconscionable ways.  Perhaps it was a family that didn’t love unconditionally and as a result neglected or abused.  Perhaps it was a relationship that you hoped would be forever that ended desp...

Send us Fan Mail Be passionate about it! “There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.” -Norman Vincent Peale It’s nearly impossible to become really accomplished at something without being passionate about it. Effort and enthusiasm will carry us further than ability and talent. In fact ability and talent grow in the soil of effort and enthus...

Send us Fan Mail How many apples in a seed? “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.” - Robert Schuller  We live in a world that demands tangible, measurable results. We comfort ourselves with data and metrics. We want to know that we are doing the right things, that our efforts matter, that we are making a difference. We want to know.  We wan...

Send us Fan Mail Don’t listen to your fears. “If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been.” - Robert H. Schuller One of my favorite gospel songs was called, “Stir Up the Gifts”. It was based on a passage from 2 Timothy that included these words: “, “For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Fear...

Send us Fan Mail It’s ok. Not everyone is going to like you.  “If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." - Mark 6:11 Nearly all of us have desire to be accepted, to be welcomed, to be embraced and affirmed. This is particularly true when we know that we have good hearts and good intentions...

Send us Fan Mail Surround yourself with people who believe in you. “And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.” - Mark 6:5 For those of us who grew up in a traditionally Christian environment, this is one of the most shocking verses in the Bible.  Jesus had returned to his home town. The people he had grown up with, who knew everythin...

Send us Fan Mail Yea are gods “ I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” - Psalm 82:6 Some folks have had very negative experiences with organized religion and have experienced a type of spiritual trauma. They experienced a heightened sense of guilt and shame because understood their primary identity as sinners always living in fear of God’s wrath  That’s not who we...

Send us Fan Mail What is Faith?  “He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease." - Mark 5:34 In the story of the woman who was healed from 12 years of bleeding, Jesus told her that her faith had made her well. What was that faith? Her faith had very little if anything to do with any of the various confessions of faith Christians reci...

Send us Fan Mail Struggle to Connect  The fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark tells the story of a woman who had suffered from excessive bleeding for twelve years.  She had tried everything. She had been to multiple doctors, endured multiple treatments and had spent everything she had and still kept getting worse.  When she heard about Jesus, she knew in her heart that if she could just touch him,...

Send us Fan Mail “ The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” - Mark 27 All of our customs, and traditions, and practices were intended to benefit us. We sometimes get so legalistic and so literal in our religion that we fail to ask if what we are doing is a blessing.  The audience Jesus was addressing was intent on making sure everyone was following the rules. Jesus pointed out that...

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Send us Fan Mail Soar Like Eagles  Today, I do not write a new reflection. Instead I leave you with one of my favorite passages from Isaiah 40: Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he...

Send us Fan Mail Balancing Self Care and Generosity  “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need.” - 2 Corinthians 8:13 It’s easy for us to look at people who are richer than we are or who have more than we have- and tell those people what they ought to be doing to help other people....

Send us Fan Mail Climb by yourself if you have to.  “O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.” - Psalm 30:3 The author of this Psalm had been in a really bad place. Sheol was the place of the dead and the word has sometimes been translated as hell. The author felt like they had been in a deep pit and the people surrounding them were in t...

Send us Fan Mail Avoid Extremes “Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise—why destroy yourself? Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool— why die before your time? It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.” - Ecclesiastes 7:16-18 One definition of zealot is a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious and...