There are times when the load of life is crushing. You’re failing in a grad program that you love and are terrified at the future void that’s hanging over you. Your husband has left you for another woman, or another man. You’ve learned that you have clinical depression and that the road of recovery will be slow and arduous, and you’re trying to figure out how you’ll cope in the meantime. There’s a certain sin in your life that makes... Read more
We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started In “The Wisdom of Stability”, the author draws on both his own experience, and the testimony of church history to declare that there’s wisdom in declaring our default position to be that we’ll remain right where we are, putting down roots and going deeper rather than embracing the mobility lifestyle that so characterizes our time and culture. I think of the... Read more
I was in Colorado, and watched with a friend there when Aron Ralston appeared on David Letterman in 2003, after cutting off his right arm, which had become pinned, as the saying goes, “between a rock and hard place”. He’d broken the bone, severed his own arm, rappelled down a 65′ canyon wall, and begin the 17 miles back to his car, when he was seen by a couple from the Netherlands, leading to his evacuation six hours after he’d... Read more
The church, over the years, hasn’t done a very good job, in my opinion, of addressing sexual ethics. We invoke “you’ll feel guilty” (but sex feels good as often guilty, for lots of reasons I won’t address here), or “you’ll get a disease, or get pregnant” (but there are ways of dealing with both of those things), or “because God says so” as if we should just blow our brains out, not caring for God’s rationale, becoming mindless servants in... Read more
The church, over the years, hasn’t done a very good job, in my opinion, of addressing sexual ethics. We invoke “you’ll feel guilty” (but sex feels good as often guilty, for lots of reasons I won’t address here), or “you’ll get a disease, or get pregnant” (but there are ways of dealing with both of those things), or “because God says so” as if we should just blow our brains out, not caring for God’s rationale, becoming mindless servants in... Read more
The biggest shock to my system upon returning from Africa was my desk and inboxes, both literal and electronic. They were stuffed with invitations to conferences. The invitations were slick: DVD’s with amazing videography and music, pictures of cool speakers whose shirts are always untucked in an enviable way; a box of cereal that looked like Wheaties but was somehow actually an invitation to a conference of champions; generic brochures filled with the beautiful faces of the young speakers who’ll... Read more
I’m back home, and don’t know how to write about what happened. But I wanted to share something… so here’s this morning’s entry from my prayer diary, with a few pictures thrown in. Good morning God… I’m back in Seattle. I remember being in the thick of my time there – tired, hungry, annoyed by sweat and bugs and the smells that come to humid places that have no showers. I remember thinking, “I can’t get home soon enough –... Read more
I’m back home, and don’t know how to write about what happened. But I wanted to share something… so here’s this morning’s entry from my prayer diary, with a few pictures thrown in. Good morning God… I’m back in Seattle. I remember being in the thick of my time there – tired, hungry, annoyed by sweat and bugs and the smells that come to humid places that have no showers. I remember thinking, “I can’t get home soon enough –... Read more
In about 11 hours our team from Seattle will board a flight that will take us (eventually, by the 5th airport) to Seattle, and we’ll be home, our exploratory trip of this region completed. We came here in order to meet some people who are doing marvelous development work and to visit the sites of wells our church has funded, some of them completed already, and one just getting started on the day we arrived in Uganda. We encountered so... Read more
Fibonacci Faith: Changing Everything
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