-
Outside the Sacred Circle; An Unexpected Encounter with Hope
There is a pinball arcade on a busy street in a busy city. The low flat roof hints at being an industrial add-on to the taller, more ornate buildings nearby. If you aren’t looking for it, you’ll miss it. Inside the walls are dressed in matte black. The lighting is off, like someone has chosen the wrong bulb temperature. Entry to the back room, our venue for the evening, is via a short, narrow hallway. We stop to grab our paper bracelets. Our two underage people are inked with large “M’s”, one for each hand. I’m wondering if maybe we should have come without them. In the bathroom, the black…
-
Love and Let Go; Praying for Adult Children
They grow up. Believe it or not, they do. They begin to build their lives separate from you. Well- kind of, it is not really as separate as they believe it to be. At least not for you. Your own innate tuning to each of them adjusts, focusing more on how they are doing, where they are struggling. Focused more now, because the time you have with them is less. Somehow you learn to soak while proximate, aware the intervals of time without them are stretching longer. There is heartache to it, of course. But also, there is pride, joy, and much cheering from the sideline. The sideline, get comfortable…
-
Building the Church One Broken Life at a Time
“But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners.” Matthew 9:13 Transparently broken, standing on the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, I believe this is where we are called to live as Christ followers. Not just the ones who have or are enduring public brokenness, shame-filled pasts, lived out one poor choice after another, but all Christ followers. Because really, aren’t we all falling ridiculously short of living a life that would qualify us to be identified as sons and daughters of God? There is tremendous rhetoric within the body of Christ regarding social…
-
For the Love of Life and All Things Amiss
“So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars Confession, I want to see the Barbie movie. Slightly embarrassing to write. Worse, there is a part of me at almost 50 years old, that expects a happily ever after. Not just a standard, let’s look back and be grateful happily ever after, but a shiny, sparkly, everyone matches and smiles with their very straight teeth kind of happily ever after. Maybe I spent too much time as a kid styling my Barbies. Or…
-
Discovering Steadfastness in a Shifting World
“I the LORD do not change.” Malachi 3:6 NIV In a world that is ever changing, in a culture ever shifting, where do we plant our feet? Why would we want to? Is freedom found in receiving the perpetual motion of change? Or is ultimate freedom found in anchoring oneself to that which does not change? One, a floating, if you will, the second an anchor while all else floats around you. If truth is relative to the lens of the truth teller, is it truth? The questions flow through my mind not unlike the shifting world around me. It’s tempting, isn’t it? A life lived receiving ever changing truth,…
-
Trusting the Heart of Jesus; When our Faith in the Promises Falters
“His (Jesus) heart was gentle and lowly toward us when we were lost. Will his heart be anything different toward us now that we are found?” Dane Ortlund, Gently and Lowly I wonder at times if I will forever want my own way. It is possible to obey Jesus but at the very center of your being, want your own way. It festers, like a bad secret, a precursor to bitterness. I know this because I sometimes live it. I would like to write, I sometimes lived it, but that would lead you to believe that I used to experience this nagging desire, and now I do not, which would…
-
Fitting In; Perhaps You Were Designed for Something More
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity I have the pleasure on this gray morning to do my keyboard clicking while the sound of my son’s music streams from behind the bathroom door. Uncommon, as his earbuds tend to keep his music tucked away. He doesn’t often share his music, except for preselected playlists intentionally chosen for his audience. Meaningful to me, because it is a contemporaneous glimpse into who he is, a snapshot. Complex mostly, genuinely thoughtful, rarely participating in anything outside of his character.…
-
Expectant; When Faith is Tangled with Disappointment
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 Expectant was my word for 2022. Expectant, wow! Who wouldn’t want this to be their “word”? My word in 2021 was brave, which made sense going into 2021, living through 2021 and looking back on 2021. I got it, I understood. But expectant? Honestly, I was afraid of it. Tentatively, I did what word of the year writers, content creators do with their word. I wrote it, I thought it, I prayed over it, but mostly I questioned it.…
-
When Warriors Weep; How to Be Brave When You Do Not Want to Be Brave
“Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep.” 1 Samuel 30:4 NIV I have a confession, a secret, I am tired of being brave. Like really just tired of it. I do not know if it is all of the bad news (I do not even want to list examples, there are too many and perhaps ignoring them will make them all go away), or social media, or getting older and watching everyday tick by until, until what? And why does not anyone tell you that one of the most bittersweet (to date anyway) aspects of…
-
Whirly-Gigs and Wheezing; Now is the Time to Think Ahead
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 The ground is covered in sprouting whirly-gigs, millions of them. Like a soft carpet, another billion tiny particles of fine yellow pollen blanket everything. They’ve got me shut inside, windows tightly closed, medicated around the clock, sipping on tea spiked with local (supposedly anti-allergy bursting) honey, breathing in and out with an albuterol inhaler close at hand. It’s finally springtime in West Michigan. And I am allergic, miserable, and short of breath. A few months ago, it was late summer in West Michigan and I received an…
