Yesterday, I met Doña Teresa, a Guatemalan Habitat for Humanity owner who lives with her teenage daughters and 5 year old Marcos whom she adopted when he was abandoned by his mother at 8 months old. Teresa is proudly settled in her new home, basking in the peacefulness that now surrounds her and the extra room her children have to play and grow. She is a weaver at a local cooperative. She is a force of gentleness and compassion. My... Read more
I’m writing from San Lucas Toliman, a town on the shore of Lake Attitlan in Guatemala. I was here last year with a team from our church building houses as part of our 5 year partnership with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala. A group of about twenty return to this town twice a year to help construct houses and build smokeless stoves in this community. This is our fourth trip, and by now, the relationships are beginning to cement. We... Read more
I am not thankful that the church has alienated so many people. People tell me they can’t come to church because they are sad, doubting, don’t have it all together, are lacking easy faith, or don’t fit into the “normal” families they see all around them. Nothing frustrates me more. Since when did the church of Jesus Christ, the one who dined with sinners, the man of sorrow and grief, become a place for a veneer of perfection and easy... Read more
I am not thankful for the struggle with weight. When I was nineteen, I was diagnosed with polycystic ovaries. It is a hormonal disorder that causes weight gain among other side effects. It was a relief to find that the defining struggle of my teenage years was not just lack of discipline but physiological. But damage to my self-concept and to my relationship with food had already been done. I had missed the sports and games of young life because... Read more
I am not thankful for the tragedies I have experienced. The first came when I was almost 21 years old. My best friend’s brother and my date to our senior banquet (we didn’t have proms at the Christian school I attended – another thing I’m not thankful for), was shot and killed. I am not thankful that my good friend Debbie dropped dead two years ago next week, leaving behind two beautiful daughters who will always have an empty place... Read more
I do not believe that bad things happen for a higher spiritual reason. There is no good reason for hurricanes. There is no good reason for war. There is no good reason for child abuse. There is no good reason for birth defects. There is no good reason for cancer. I do believe that bad things happen and then good things happen because of them. Or, put another way, I believe we must separate the goodness of the results from... Read more
I preached on John 3 last Sunday. Nicodemus coming in the night, asking what it means to be born again. God so loving the world that he gave his only begotten son. Familiar words and a text that many of us have stopped listening to because we’ve been given a specific set of lenses… For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (to die on the cross for our sins) that whoever believes in Him... Read more
Beginning this blog, I want to make it clear that I am working to live into the title and claim no great mastery of it. I daily struggle to live into the space of both/and in our polarized world. Just the other day I drove by someone with a bumper sticker for the presidential candidate that I am hoping will not win in November. I turned around and looked at her to see what someone that crazy looks like. Wow.... Read more
Breathing Room: Faith Beyond Either/Or
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