One of the most amazing things about the Bible is that the authors didn’t fully comprehend what they were writing. As a shepherd boy, David wrote poems of praise to pass the time in the fields and journaled prayers on anguish and praise to God later in life. Paul wrote letters from a prison cell…
I am currently in a season of “reconstruction” in my faith, following a dark and challenging season of “deconstruction” from which I didn’t know if I would ever emerge. More than ever before in my Jesus-loving life, the less Christ-like realities of the church and organized religion as a whole have been making themselves known…
I’m not sure how the tradition started. When my children were young, we did not co-sleep. I am not against co-sleeping; it just wasn’t something that happened in our family. My son was a super noisy baby (read: laughed out loud in his sleep) and my daughter was particularly independent. I didn’t want to sleep…
In 2014, Victoria Osteen made a statement that quickly hit the internet. “God wants you to be happy” she asserted. I remember rolling my eyes at her cheapened prosperity gospel. It’s not that God wants us to be miserable, but Scripture doesn’t support the idea that his chief aim is our happiness. The entire concept…
“Thank you for being here. It means so much to me.” Her words pulsed with an unspoken yearning to believe I was there on purpose, just for her. I was dumbfounded. I was serving on a Kairos weekend at the women’s state prison, and until five minutes ago, we didn’t know each other. Or rather,…
“I’ll take that one,” said the tanned, surfer-haired teenage boy. He sounded cocky. I shifted uncomfortably in my shorts and old navy T-shirt, all long legs and freckles and sunburn and salty red hair. I stood beside a few other friends, lined up against the wall in a crowded hotel lobby like we were in…