Celebrating in the Midst
We must approach celebration as a spiritual discipline, a rebellious act of worship we practice on the good days, the hard days, and the ordinary days. When we’ve spent time earnestly rehearsing a spiritual response, it becomes a part of who we truly are. With the ingrained discipline of sacred celebration, we can live and respond from a place of truth, rather than a place of regret or despair.
Community & Commitment
Christ-like community is neither incidental nor accidental. It requires the intentional surrender of our time, money, comfort, and emotional energy in the interest of contributing to the healing of our neighbors and, ultimately, the healing of the world.
And You Will Be Blessed
I’ve had to wonder—in what way is it a blessing to welcome people who are poor and needy? In what way is it a blessing to associate with the dispossessed and identify with the ones who most people see in terms of “can’t do,” the ones who can’t walk or can’t talk or can’t see or can’t move quickly? In what way could it be a blessing to show hospitality to people who can’t?
Calling & Limitations
Limitations don’t have to be losses; they can be the avenues to our flourishing. This is particularly true if we stay focused and creative within their boundaries, if we care for and cherish what’s inside them.
Detours
I imagine most of us have fairly straightforward pictures in our heads about what our lives will look like and who we will become. When something happens that is not inside the four corners of that picture, we view it as a detour and hope to get back on track as quickly as possible. So what happens when you take a detour and can't ever get back on that original path again?
A Picture of Grace in Italy
The world I will roll into tomorrow deserves to see the light of the world shining in the darkness and the works of God displayed through a life disabled but one gloriously enabled by grace.
Sacred Tears
Yes friend, the Lord has purpose you for. There may not be healing on this earth but there will be fruit. There is a deep longing in each to understand who we are and why we exist, and, for some of us, our suffering is the very vehicle to this understanding. Your purpose will look different than mine, but it will absolutely impact other people because God created us first for himself and then for each other.
God’s Word as a Catalyst for Community
Within the pages of the Bible, God has given us the full history of His promise to humanity: to rescue us from death and infuse us with life. Despite its density, we need to read it …and read it regularly.
I’ve always wondered, “If this is the source text for my worldview, why do I barely review it on my own?”
Between the Advents
We often forget that four hundred long, tumultuous years are compressed into the single page that bifurcates our holy scriptures into an old and new testament. Within the infinity of that blank page, God’s people waited and waited and waited in the deafening silence and weighty absence of prophetic words or divine appearances. I can only imagine how their once-helpful hope became heavy and burdensome, rather than buoying, as their faith faded in the long-expected Messiah.
Life in the After
I like the word straining. It implies that looking ahead is not easy; it takes effort. We usually think of strain in relation to pain. And maybe that is what Paul is implying: looking ahead is hard, requiring effort and maybe discomfort. But we must strain forward to what lies ahead, though it may feel better to look back.
A Good and Perfect Gift
Before Penny was born, I would have assumed that an extra chromosome was just that, a crack in the cosmos, evidence of the fractured nature of all creation. But how could I imagine such a thing about my daughter? I couldn’t figure it out.
Maybe They’ve Never Seen Someone Without Feet
At just ten years old, Jude offered the antidote to shame to a crowd of four hundred misty-eyed people, most of whom were older than he and many of whom have typical bodies. Through the unexpected teacher of pain, Jude has learned what most of us will never fully understand: we were all made in the image of God, and we don’t have to be ashamed.
Just Put a Band-aid on It: How Wounds Heal
What if our corporate bodies were oriented to healing the way our physical bodies are? Christians call ourselves the body of Christ. That term is a collective one—literally, a corporate one—encompassing all of us in a mysterious unbreakable bond of unity in diversity. And so we may draw on the analogy between the human body’s natural wound-healing system and the ways we can mirror those processes as we strive to heal communal wounds, whether in the church, the family, the workplace, or the wider community.
Breaking Free from Body Shame
Whether you struggle with illness, injury, or just insecurity: I believe God’s Word can be a balm for our souls and a pathway to freedom. It’s one thing to know in your head that you were created in the image of God. Yet it’s quite another to experience this belief in your body, against the cultural ideals of a woman’s worth. And between the two lies a world of frustration, disappointment, and the shame of somehow feeling both too much and never enough in your body.
How Did We Get Here? The Science of Faith
Humanity is the work of God’s own hands. If you think that life on Earth took four billion years or so to get where it is now, the Bible gives you room to hold this view. If you believe it took seven days, the Bible gives you a solid place to stand. What it does not yield to either camp is that we are a cosmic accident.
The Shape They Are
For these 2 hours, I could just surrender the impossibility of trying to recognize and categorize every worry in the world—as we grow and gray, we realize: they are the shape that they are.
Choosing “Through”
God never intended for us to be damsels rescued from distress, but for us to be His co-laborers in this beautiful world, which means he wants us to wake up to who we were created to be.
Where You’re Planted
I’ve long felt intimidated by the vast catalog of contemplative disciplines, viewing them as something else I’m supposed to do, follow in a particular order, using precise language, while journaling, as the sun rises, before checking my phone. What I’m finding my soul desperate for these days, though, is silence. Sometimes the most helpful something is a sacred nothing.
Eyes to See
I used to believe that on Earth, most of us received an equal distribution of pain; we all had a comparable storm to endure. But after two storms in my first quarter of a century—my dad’s suicide and a seventeen-hour brain surgery—I started to wonder if maybe this wasn’t true. Maybe pain didn’t play fair.
Redefining Communion
We can make our way through entire days and weeks without acknowledging the Beauty of our Creator. Without admiring His creation, or loving our neighbor. Without taking one long look in the mirror, and choosing to truly love what we see. To acknowledge the truth that the Image of God exists within me.