So, why do we make this annual trek to mark Jeremy’s birth, death, Christmas, Easter and other special occasions? I guess somehow in the ritual of the rhythm of returning to the grave we find comfort as we remember. We seek closure. We find consistency. We seek to make sense out of a situation that otherwise makes little to no
But here at the site of the empty tomb is our leap beyond lip service. When we take up the mantle from Mary and open our mouth to the truth. There is something bursting below the surface. A little seed of germination. This is Easter…we are the outliers who believe that despite all the impossibility of being raised from death
Now that light has dawned, one cannot simply stand and look at a symbol of defeat and the past. New life has broken in and we are not allowed to just look; we are invited and commissioned to go and tell.
It seems, then, that God would not want anything bad to happen in the world, and he certainly has the power to stop them from happening. Yet bad things—unimaginably horrific things—happen every day. Over many centuries, philosophers and theologians have attempted to solve this problem by explaining why God would choose to create a world like ours, where humans
Today is April 16. Every year I write something in memory of my Mama Sarah and in honor of my mom, Maxine Stoddard. On this day 37 years ago, my Mama Sarah was murdered by my biological father; at that point, many lives were forever changed. She was murdered on my mom’s birthday (April 16) and buried on mine (April 18). You can read
The promise is not that we would be safe but that we would be faithful. The angel of God does not always spare us from tragedy or troubles, but enables us to look at tragedy troubles through different eyes.
I find myself walking in the semi-dark, friends clustered around me. Our hands are full, carrying materials to preserve a corpse. It was a long Sabbath. We were supposed to rest, so we did. But there’s no rest from thoughts of despair and grief. They follow you into every room you enter. Like we had followed Him. We saw the
We must be honest about our failures and sins. None of us lives up to the standards our faith demands. But this doesn’t mean we cease wrestling with and proclaiming the Word.
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and
I confess that I don’t know that much about adoption. I used to tell my little brother that he was adopted—from the animal shelter. I have reaped the consequences of this in my own sons, as the generational dysfunction marches on. I remember lying in bed as an angsty teen, wondering what it would feel like to be chosen, wanted,
Let’s talk about hate. In the first few verses of the Bible, we meet our God in his Trinitarian wholeness. The Father creates, the Son speaks, the Spirit hovers. This Trinitarian God partners within himself in the work of creation. You can sense the single-mindedness — the energy flowing within himself creating goodness. There is no sense of hierarchy here. In fact, a hierarchy
We share the grace of God through word, deed, and sign, whether anybody notices or not.
You can read all kinds of studies out there showing that ministry is isolating. You see the stats that pastors experience burnout in staggering numbers. I remember sitting in class and hearing that many of the people to your right and your left will not be there in a few years. I remember laughing and thinking to myself, oh, not us. We
What does your church do with people who are differently abled, disabled, mentally handicapped, handicapped, or crippled? (All of those terms have been used in my thirty-odd trips around the sun.) Do you have someone in your church who comes in a wheelchair? Do you have training for teachers and nursery workers, preschool workers and children’s ministers on how to engage kids
Friends, there is nothing that can separate you from the love of God. You have never been and you will never be unloved.
I will do whatever it takes so that God can work in me and through me.
Meditation is a treasured practice in Christian history but it is also a much-needed spiritual practice in my life.
Today is the day after. The day after a young black man got beat up in a parking garage, the scene caught by a quick photojournalist (I can’t imagine how sore he is). The day after a stunned mom learned from reporters that her son had been arrested for plowing his car into a crowd of pedestrians (she was in complete shock).
Embracing the pain of the crucifixion in order to experience the power of the resurrection involves right living, not easy living.
When we think about the story of Creation in the Christian faith, we typically do it within the context of Genesis, the story of the past and how things came to be. One may think this creating process was settled at the beginning of time, and that God transitioned from being an entrepreneur to a manager, or worse, a mere aloof supervisor. However, if we pay close
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