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Deep groaning needs to happen
Another weekend, another shooting. A teen party in a small town in Alabama. Four dead. Louisville. Nashville. It’s exhausting. I know we get tired of hearing “thoughts and prayers.” I get tired because I know people are now saying it… and not even doing it for the victims.
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What happens after Easter
I am choosing to learn more about the discipline of celebration. We have cycles of feasting and fasting. I tend to learn more about the “fasting” part… the “giving up”, the “hard work,” etc. I honestly don’t do as good with the celebrating. I am walking through Eastertide with a listening ear and a willing heart to walk better in…
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Christ is able to know our hurts
“Jesus is not Zeus. He was a sinless man, not a sinless Superman. He woke up with bed head. He had pimples at thirteen. He never would have been on the cover of Men’s Health (he had “no beauty that we should desire him,” Isa. 53:2). He came as a normal man to normal men. He knows what it is…
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The heartbreaking temptation to prove ourselves
THIS ARTICLE from Russell Moore is a must read. We don’t want to just know we’re “right”… we want to WIN and then shove it in the faces of people who think we’re wrong. Much of what passes for “political action” or even just “cultural engagement” is really about a sense of injury—more specifically a sense of humiliation: “You think…
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The heart of Christ
“Jesus walked the earth rehumanizing the dehumanized and cleansing the unclean. Why? Because his heart refused to let him sleep in. Sadness confronted him in every town. So wherever he went, whenever he was confronted with pain and longing, he speaks the good contagion of his cleansing mercy.” — Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners…
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The road to Emmaus
One of my favorite Gospel stories is Luke 24:13-35. Jesus comes on two men as they walk to Emmaus. They are feeling a sense of hopelessness because their hope, Jesus, had been crucified… and now his body was missing. NT Wright sums up the passage’s meaning:
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Easter can’t be one day!
Eastertide is a season in the Church going 50 days to Pentecost. I’ve found I can learn a lot about Advent and Lent, times of preparation, discipline, and repentance. But Christmastide and Eastertide, times of celebration, are not as well walked out in the Church, and, quite honestly, in my life. Easter can’t be contained to one day!
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Our cultural blindness
Over the past several years I have become more aware of a blindness we carry in the American white evangelical church regarding sin.
