What can we do with all our soul-trouble? Where can we take it? The season of Lent says to God’s people: “Bring it.”Read more
The First Dance
The first time dancing is mentioned in the Bible is in Exodus 15. Do you remember the reason for the mention? It was a victory dance. In Exodus 15 the Hebrew women picked up their tambourines and began to sing and dance. Why? Because the house of Egypt lay in chaotic ruins on the other side of the sea. Yesterday the children of these women had been the property of the Egyptian gods, but today they were all free. TheirRead more
Waiting on the Couch
I’d won! I was the Dancing Queen!Read more
Quotidian Mission
I was walking the dog on the greenbelt trail and a woman caught my eye and waved me over. She’d met my teenage daughter the day before – they’d enjoyed a conversation while the dog swam – and she wanted me to know how much she’d enjoyed the company of both. After some pleasantries I turned to go. “What I didn’t tell your daughter” she said quietly, is that my life is very hard right now…” I waited. I askedRead more
Pray For Light
Not long ago I was invited to an event and ushered to my seat at a dinner table. My place at the table was next to two women who loved each other very much. Both were curious, charming, well-read, and remarkably competent in their respective fields of work. One had been raised, fairly happily, in a Christian home and the other was actively searching for truth wherever that might lead her. The couple hoped to get married and were currentlyRead more
The Last Breath
So let’s reason together, and feel free to wrestle with God, as He can certainly take it. This absolute hysteria over Covid-19 is a temptation…Read more
Simmering on Red
It’s into this suspicious, seething, and anxious age that we’ve been born.
On purpose, God birthed you and me into this wounded and weary world in which we both now walk.Read more
The Color of Dirt
In our beginning, God made the earth. He made the sky (where the birds live) and the dry land (where the people live). The land of the earth – our home – was created with every kind and color of dirt: black soil, red clay, white sand, brown loam. Each kind of terrestrial humus was hospitable for sustaining life. All the ground was beautiful and useful, patiently awaiting God’s seed of life. Then God made mankind from the dust ofRead more
Please Help Us
Our Father, who breathed divine life into every man and woman on earth – who is there like you? Please help us. Please light our path and show us the way to go. We desperately need the mind of your Son to live in us today. Please guard our bodies and our passions. We need the love and power of your Spirit controlling all that we do, and think, and say. Our Father, who knows the hidden and innermost partsRead more
A Royal Shame
Everyone who lived in the Roman empire had seen crucified people along the roads. Everyone had seen the insects crawling, the carrion circling, the scavenger animals gnawing the feet of dead men still dying. Everyone knew the smell – the shameful smell – of naked men unable to control their most private bodily functions. And yet everyone, both Greek and Jew, agreed that the men strung up and spread out like skinned animals had earned their shame. For the Jews,Read more