The Christmas story is one of our favorite and best. There’s no shortage to the ways it speaks to us of our great need and God’s great love. But among all of its beautiful themes, […]
White Christmas: an Advent poem
“Come, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are as red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” — Isaiah […]
The God Hat
How do people react when you wear your God Hat?
Becoming motherless
My Mom is dead. How do I even wrap my mind, my heart around that statement? Every day of my life, my Mom has been there. She may have been miles away, but was always […]
If you don’t need your community, you don’t have one.
I was with a friend who had gone through a major life trauma and he was talking about a conversation he’d just had with another friend. “He told me, ‘Don’t put any expectations on me,’” my […]
The heart of Thanksgiving
I love eating and Thanksgiving is easily the best eating day of the year as far as I’m concerned. And with its leftovers that stretch over the following week, my joy is good food is […]
The everyday battle
Every day is a battle for the soul. Who will I be today? Will I live graciously as one who knows myself to be deeply and rightly loved? Or will I simple react to circumstance? […]
Praying our sicknesses
The most miserable experiences in my life include being sick. I’m grateful I don’t get sick often, but when I do get something, I tend to go down hard. I can vividly recall the semi-madness […]
What the storm reveals
The winds howled and rattled the single-paned windows. Branches tumbled from the fir trees in our backyard as we sat safely in our house, grateful for sturdy modern architecture. And my three-year-old son, with wide […]
Thor: Ragnarok & life in America
Marvel Studios has ruled the box office for more than a decade, spinning out movie after movie in the most lucrative franchise since James Bond. At the heart of their financial success, I believe, is […]
6 steps to defusing passive-aggressive relationships
We humans are polarizing people. Our actions create opposite reactions. That Facebook friend who rants against Trump actually creates Trump supporters. Strong conservative stances create liberal stances. We make our polar opposites. In our interpersonal […]
Hey God! Can you hear me?
Occasionally, my daughter will call me by my full name. Generally, my kids call me Papa, but when I hear her say my full name, I know that she’s been calling for me for a […]
Kevin Spacey & the out-of-control life
In the wake of the flood of #MeToo stories of women being abused by men have come a second flood of stories of men being abused by men, with the current trend being stories about […]
Judged!
“How dare you judge me!” “Who do you think you are to judge me like that?” We hate to be judged by other people. We hate being looked down on by self-righteous prigs. But sometimes […]
Unmasking our idolatries
Idolatry is not a thing of the past. It’s very much alive and well in my heart and yours. The only difference between modern idolaters and ancient idolaters is honesty — they were the honest […]
The Reformation at 500 – some of its blessing and curses
Today is the 500th birthday of the Protestant Reformation, the day we remember Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. It’s a day I’m so grateful for […]
Halloween is about being a good neighbor
Some people just don’t like Halloween. I can understand why. Its pagan roots. The frenzy for candy. Yet another American form of consumerism. I get it. But I love Halloween. Dressing up is fun — […]
Psalm 23 & the contented life
I was five when I memorized Psalm 23. I had one of those emergency info bracelets and it had part of the psalm inscribed into it as well. So, I memorized it. But the first […]
Who you gonna call?
The most basic condition of my life is neediness. I don’t have what it takes to make it. I need help. This basic lack is also my most basic frustration. I hate admitting my insufficiency. […]
The humbling path of growing old
As I watch my parents in their twilight years, I think about the inevitability of my own impending elder age. At 50, I’m still in fairly good shape physically, but I know the decline is […]
A prayer for when I’m tempted to hedge my bets with God
Growing up as the youngest kid in a game-playing family, I had to learn to be strategic from a very early age just to survive. I learned well. The tile-based game Carcassonne is one of […]
How to not live a stupid life
There are some people who seem to attract trouble like nails attract hammers. They simply get pounded by trouble over and over again. I love the old John Cleese TV show Fawlty Towers, but my […]
Raising #NotMe kids in a #MeToo world
I’ve been saddened over the past few weeks to read the #MeToo stories of women abused by Harvey Weinstein and others. And that sadness has deepened into grief as women I know personally have added […]
Is it possible for youths to stay pure?
Youth is the age of passion. So, when Psalm 119:9 asks the question, “How can a young person stay on the path of purity?” I’m left wondering if it’s an intentionally ironic question. Because the […]
The delight of servants & strangers
We are servants and strangers. And this is a tough thing to swallow for people who want to be royals and celebrities. There’s an imperial urge to each of us humans. We assemble our own […]
Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein & the abuse of women
I used to love Bill Cosby, but I can hardly listen to him anymore. I memorized so many of his hilarious stories when I was in junior high, I could recite them word for word. […]
The cure for political angst
Every now and then, I quit social media. My Facebook friends get too whiny with their politics, too woe-is-me about the world. My Twitter feed gets too full of sarcasm about the most recent news […]
When the covenant breaks apart
Our basic relationship with God is defined not by a contract, but by a covenant. But there isn’t just one kind of covenant in the Bible though. Rather, which kind of covenant is used depends […]
17 ways to foster neighborliness
We have lost the art of being neighbors. Our cars have killed it, keeping us from walking our neighborhoods as we jump into them and speed away without talking to anyone. Our phones have killed […]
Unfashionable faith
So, maybe we should just stop trying to stay in fashion.
When the silent God speaks, what does he say?
Silence is hard to interpret. In fact, an argument from silence is considered a logical fallacy. And yet, we try to interpret the silences of others on a regular basis. We question what people think […]
On turning 50
I’ve been saying the word fairly frequently over the last few months, trying to get my mouth used to it. “Fifty.” It’s got a nice, clean sound to it. It’s not cumbersome like “forty-seven.” And […]
Love is inconvenient
Love is inconvenient. Love is getting up in the middle of the night to clean up a child who has thrown up. Love is driving out of your way to be with a friend for […]
Hugh Hefner, Playboy & the death of sex
I remember the first time I saw a Playboy magazine. I was about 11 and an older neighbor has stolen a copy from the nearby 7-11. Not yet to puberty, it didn’t have the effect […]
When the news gets too noisy, kiss the king
“I read the news today. Oh boy.” — The Beatles Sometimes, I wonder why I read the news at all. It’s just noise. And there’s already enough noise in my life without it. But I […]
An ode to Jerusalem
Jerusalem had become the jewel of Israel, the biggest and most glorious city ever built in that strip of land between the Mediterranean to the west and the desert to the east. No other city […]
The sweet life
I want to live the sweet life, a life I can wake up to each day with joy and expectation, a life that calls me further up and further in. But what makes up the […]
What are you pursuing?
If there is a motto for America, it is simply this: Pursue happiness. It’s sometimes rephrased as “follow your heart” or “follow your dreams,” but the idea is the same. Meaning and direction for life […]
No more whiny Christians!
For my entire life, I’ve heard fellow followers of Jesus complain about what they read in the newspapers and see on TV. “The world is going to hell in a hand basket!” they complain. “Our […]
Vindication!
The first time I stood before a judge, I was guilty. Fortunately, it was just traffic court and I’d only been going 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. I’ve also had my moments […]
Psalm 5 — The God who hears & the words we speak
The first worship song that lodged itself in my heart was the Maranatha version of Psalm 5:1-3 from the early 1980s. Its minor key longing echoed inside of me, stirring a yearning for God that […]
Pruned
I’m someone who likes to keep his options open. I like possibilities. When it’s time to choose, I’ll choose. But in the meantime, I don’t like to limit my options. A friend recently reminded me […]
Asking the “second question”
In every conversation, the first question is a simple connecting question. “What’s your name?” “How’s it going?” “What’s up?” “Nice day today, isn’t it?” “How about those [insert sports team name]?” There’s not a lot […]
Entering life by facing death
Death is all around us. We deal with it almost on a daily basis. All kinds of deaths. Deaths of dreams. Deaths of careers. Deaths of dignity and reputation. Deaths of the body. Deaths of […]
Back to zero
There were Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every day of the week at the church I used to pastor. On three days, there were two meetings, for a total of ten per week. They pretty much owned our […]
The importance of boredom
Something unexpected and disturbing happens quite often when people gather around a loved one who is dying: They get bored. In my work as a part-time hospital chaplain, I’ve seen it many times. In response to […]
There’s no such thing as a balanced life, but there’s something better.
I can balance my checkbook, but I can’t balance my life. It’s impossible. Things in this world just don’t like to stay in balance — just watch my attempts at yoga! Juggling a handful of balls […]
Is God silent?
The Bible is a record of God speaking. God speaks. He speaks creation into being. And through the words he speaks to us through others, our faith comes into being. As Paul writes in Romans […]
Psalm 149 — a song in bed & a sword in the hand
Prayer easily becomes rote and formulaic, even when we try to be spontaneous. I hate that about myself. I quickly and easily fall into ruts where I’m pretty much praying about the same things in […]
The Romans Road revised
When I was a teenager, I was taught what is called the Romans Road as a way to explain to others why and how we enter into a relationship with God through Jesus. At the […]
Psalm 150 — uncontainable praise!
A can of soda was a rarity in the super healthy home I grew up in. But occasionally, my friends and I would get ahold of some pop cans. And after we’d each guzzled one, […]
The Empire is always recruiting
Mine is a Star Wars family. I was in the last days of 4th grade when what is now called Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope came out. I was mesmerized and saw it in […]
Wonder Woman & the problem of violence
We need strong women in movies and fiction. The helpless, screamy women of far too many movies offer little to the imaginations of girls and boys who see them on their screens — girls who […]
The Journey — 9 things a canoe trip teaches us about following Jesus
When each of my boys turns 13, I take them on a week-long canoe trip on the Bowron Lakes — a chain of about a dozen lakes way up in the interior of British Columbia. […]
The Journey — 17 things a hiking trip teaches us about following Jesus
A while back, I joined a few other helpers to take about a dozen middle schoolers on a camping trip for two nights and days. And we survived! We spent a lot of one day […]
Worship that reorders our imaginations
There’s a lot more to worship than singing some songs and hearing a sermon, with prayers and an offering interspersed between them. There are also a number of purposes for worship, but I want to […]
Why we should do our good deeds publicly
There are a lot of things Jesus said that rarely get repeated and a handful that get repeated often. Among the often-repeated is this: Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others […]
Seven reasons why I’m a conservationist
When I was growing up, environmentalists were the enemy. They loved the earth and hated God. At least, that’s what I was told. It wasn’t totally untrue, because somehow there had come to be a […]
October in June
I have been a U2 fan since War was released in 1983, during my sophomore year in high school. I wish I could say I’ve followed them since their first album Boy, but I think my third […]
Real faith works — why the grace vs. works debate is bogus
I was raised with a theological presumption that living by grace and living by works were two contrary approaches to faith. According to our take on things, there were the rule-bound, Law-following, works-based people (like […]
Let’s talk about death
I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies this year. Some of them were elderly and should have known their days were limited. Others were fairly young and assumed they had years to go before even […]
Practice freedom
Slavery is easy. I don’t mean that life as a slave is easy. I mean it’s easy to live as a slave. We do it all the time. Lots of us. Freedom requires practice. It […]
The awkward wonder of Mother’s Day
As a kid in kindergarten, I used to pick flowers for my mom from front yards on my several block walk home. She loved the sentiment but gently stopped me from destroying our neighbors’ gardens. […]
Prepare to be offended — cussing, political correctness & the word “like”
At a party we hosted, we set down one ground rule for the evening: No using the word “like.” That’s it. Malefactors would be required to put a sticker on their face for every use […]
God’s tattoos
I don’t have any tattoos (yet). But I’ve thought about it. The cost and the pain have held me back. But even more than that is the permanence of tattoos. They become a part of […]
Worship is a dance
Worship is a dance. And so too is theology. From our perspective, both of them have Jesus in the middle. But the reality, if we could step back a bit further, is surprising. I like […]
Still my hero at 91
Yesterday was my Dad’s 91st birthday. He was 42 when I was born, so I’ve only seen the second half of his life, but I’m so grateful for what I have seen. He has shown […]
Set your mind on these things
Our minds are marvelous things. How we think shapes who we are and how we live. I’ve come across so many posts and articles by people who’ve had personal Renaissances during a season of Lent […]
Happy “Love One Another” Day (also known as Maundy Thursday)
“What the heck is Monday Thursday? And how can it be Monday when it’s Thursday? I don’t get it.” For most of my life, the churches I attended ignored the Christian calendar. But when in […]
Faith works — how faith values work & keeps it from becoming slavery
I find it ironic when someone claims others are #badbible readers while doing bad Bible reading themselves. The Facebook post below is a case in point. The writer is obviously quoting Jesus from Matt. 11:28 […]
Putting on Christ
My body loves to gain weight. I know I’m not alone in this. But if I don’t exercise, I’m in trouble. And when I do exercise, I generate vast quantities of sweat. Buckets of sweat. […]
The cure for bad Bible reading
The sermon was excellent. It shared timeless biblical wisdom but in a fresh way. People were moved. But I was ticked off. Although I agreed with the preacher’s comments, the way the preacher handled the […]
“Grace is not a thing, grace is a Person”
James: In your assessment do Evangelicals need to re-discover Trinitarian grace and participation or do they have a robust theology of life and Christian living? Geordie: Evangelical theology, with all of its strengths, has some […]
Live love. Love life.
If God had a hobby, what would it be? Painting by number? Going to as many Dave Matthews Band concerts as possible? Racing monster trucks? We have a sense from the Bible that God is […]
Tell all the truth, but …
One of my favorite Emily Dickinson poems goes as such: Tell all the truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightning […]
Start with Jesus
In the churches I grew up in, the apostle Paul was king. On most Sundays, we heard sermons from Paul’s letters. And theology derived almost solely from Paul’s writings were our basic belief system. Because […]
Prayerless worship & worship that leads to praying
As I’ve spent time with different churches, I’ve become aware of how prayerless evangelical worship has become. By stripping away liturgical elements, many of our gatherings have ended up without much depth in prayer at […]
Ending skin color as a matter of identity
We’ve invented a lot of things in the United States. Some glorious. Some horrific. One of the horrors is using skin color as a matter of identity. Before this unusual invention, language, religion, tribe, and […]
How Lenten fasts help develop different appetites
Lent is one of the least appreciated seasons in the Christian calendar. Being a penitential season, it’s a time of fasting — of saying an emphatic NO! to one particular area of our lives — […]
Bodies — why we struggle with them and what God is doing about it
When my Mom had a massive stroke 27 years ago that left her body significantly handicapped, I was left with a question that was new to me but had been asked for thousands of years […]
Companions in the suffering
It was surreal. It made my head ache. And my heart too. I was watching someone compare the sufferings of others, elevating one over the other. Legitimizing one while delegitimizing the other. She held the […]
Immigrants & refugees in the Bible
The Bible is filled with immigrants. In fact, most of its major characters spent time as foreigners in other lands. Here’s a quick look at them. Adam and Eve had to leave their initial home. […]
A sliver of glass in our hearts
In Hans Christian Andersen’s tale The Snow Queen, he tells a series of seven stories. The first of these is about a demon-made mirror which shatters into tiny pieces which are scattered around the world. The pieces fall […]
Sermon or Scripture: which is more important?
The question of which is more important, sermon or Scripture, seems like a no-brainer. But the way Scripture is handled before and during sermons tells the truth of the matter. Are the Scriptures read first? […]
7 reasons people follow bad leaders & movements
Who would follow Lord Voldemort? Or Sauron? All those legions of evil henchmen in the movies and comic books and such have never seemed realistic to me. Where do they come from? And how do the […]
What are you anxious about? Jesus is praying
There are a lot of things I pray about. And a lot more than I never pray about. In fact, there are plenty of things that are major concerns for me that I never petition […]
3 reasons why “going to church” is still important
Going to church is becoming less and less of a basic Christian practice, making our discipleship anemic. For years, I have heard people say, “We don’t go to church; we are the church.” In one way, that’s […]
A different citizenship. A different hope.
We live in a world of beliefs. We are told that if we just invest ourselves fully in certain human endeavors, we can save ourselves and we can solve the problems of the world. Politics, […]
Two kinds of knowing — one informs me, the other transforms me
“The boy was frightened, and tried to say a prayer, but he could remember nothing but the multiplication table.” — Hans Christian Andersen, The Snow Queen I am a child of the information age. I have […]
A bruised reed
Reed had it all together. At least, he tried to. And boy, did he try. Reed had a 4.0 in school and felt all kinds of pressure to keep it perfect. And it was killing […]
A return to neighborliness
I didn’t vote for Donald Trump and I didn’t participate in the Women’s Day marches, but it’s essential to me that I am in neighborly relationships with both sets of people who did. Neighborliness requires […]
Learning to listen
The family was in crisis. A young mother in critical condition. Two small children. Family gathered around her bed, praying for her. Life on the line. Hearts on the line. As I watched this unfold […]
Comprayning
Uh oh. I think I just might be a comprayner.
Why don’t I pray about some things?
We were sitting at the table following dinner and the conversation turned to why we don’t pray about some things, including some of our significant and life-changing decisions. And as we talked, I was struck […]
Watching stories or making stories
I am most alive when watching TV (said no one ever). Sitting passively on the sofa while all kinds of action, adventure, creativity, and relational drama unfolds on the screen gives the feeling of living […]
From wishing to withing: a Christmas poem
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel — which means “God with us.” [Matthew 1:23] And surely I am with you always, to the very end […]
Psalm 133 & the 2 surprising results of unity
Unity is great. That sense of community where our relationships just seem to click, where we have a joyful sense of belonging, where our purposes align, where we seem to have the same mind without […]
The Grinch & the Gospel
The gospel echoes all around us. We hear bits of it in stories and songs, see it in art and film, and live it in daily acts both small and large. Because of this, I […]
The Gospel according to Elf
Each December, we engage in retelling our favorite stories. The all-time favorite at this time of year is of the birth of Jesus. But we’ve got other favorites that get repeated each December. And one […]
Thanksgiving & its opposite
Sometimes, we understand something best by taking a look at its opposite. And when it comes to living the grateful life, a quick examination of our complaining is revealing. In their classic Saturday Night Live sketches, […]