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We live in a time in which there are hyper-obsessions with how we describe ourselves and then how we label others.
The last couple of weeks have been a huge reminder to me that there is still more goodness in this world than bad.
It is always the transformation of the smallest part that leads to the transformation of the whole. 
We groan and cry out in this painful life experience together. 
The cold, hard fact is that there are prayers that God does not answer.
Who can stand before this cosmically-sized love without being completely transformed?
Either way, you will ultimately face then refiner’s fire.
The problem is that Hell is never once mentioned in the Bible.
When you are confronted with the reality of an undeserved kindness, it can be transformative.
The word wrath isn’t an unloading of God’s fury and rage on the unrepentant.
Should we pray for the president?
The judgment of God is simply giving a person what they have freely chosen.
We have only ever been alienated from God in our minds.
I was told that I needed to be saved from my sins so that I wouldn’t go to Hell when I die.
The most misunderstood word in all of Christianity.
These small moments are gifts, if we will receive them and let them teach us.
But what if, in the midst of celebrating the peace of Christ through ritual and routine, we have actually neglected peace in our lives?
There is a crushing agony to experiencing so much stillness and peace and serenity, but then walking back into so much antipathy, hatred, and division. 
So what exactly is the good news?
There are many people who struggle to understand a God who unconditionally and preemptively forgives everyone.
The forgiveness of God is unconditional and preemptive.
Where O Light are you in this darkness?
You may not trust these words now, but there is hope in your pain and suffering.
I resided in a relatively joyless existence for the majority of my adult life
The issue of arming our churches is now more relevant than ever.
Joy is an ever-present reality to which we open wide our souls to receive, but it is also a remembering and a longing.
God, I am done with you.
"Thoughts and prayers" are devoid of meaning, of value, of consequence, of participation, of action, of change.
Maybe my struggle has been with the way in which our culture has always portrayed prayer.
We live in an age in which stimulation and consumption are all too normal in our lives.
All you have to do is walk outside and take a deep breath and accept the invitation.
The Good News of the Kingdom of God is not one of the many things.  It is the thing.
Our heads told us that this was the right decision, but nothing told our hearts to prepare for being wrecked.
I can't overstate how important it is for each of us to have people in our lives that we allow to speak truth to us.
For if the Resurrection was God’s final and decisive victory over sin and death, then the Advent of Christ was the day the war began.
There is an ever-present reality into which we can enter, a realm into which we are continually invited, where love wholly embraces, mends broken-hearts, births a new way of living, gives eyes to see people and the world differently, and changes each one of us in such a profound way that thanksgiving becomes the very essence of our being, and the perpetual outflow of our spirit.
It is a very, very bizarre phenomenon. Despite clear and overwhelming evidence that Jesus wants his followers to be peacemakers, to love our enemies, and to not repay evil with evil, the vast majority of Christians in the United States are pro-capital punishment and pro-war.
That is the great casualty of this life- we have become disconnected from this great embrace and allowed ourselves to be separated from the source of perfect freedom and perfect love. And it is this disconnection that, no matter the paths we have traveled or how it happened in each of our lives, has steadily closed us off from the life we were always meant to live, the life we were always meant to experience.
Living constantly in the burden and pain of our suffering can either become an end destination or a passageway for each of us.
There is a kingdom movement outside of the church walls being embodied and coming to life in a hungry people.
You know the old saying, “It takes one to know one.” Well, the reason I can identify this problem so easily is because I was part of the problem.
It is a sad reality how weak we are, how eagerly we consume what we are being fed, and how easily we allow our moral structures to fall.
The message of “your work only matters if thousands of people are reading it” began to unconsciously work it’s way into my head. And that’s a message that completely kills.
I ache because life can be so much better than what you are settling for.
The truth is that we can very easily miss the fact that "life to the fullest" has been here all along... right in front of us... in everything we do... in every moment.
Is this the way life will always be? Will things ever be set right? Will there ever be peace? Will there ever be justice? Will the aching ever go away?
In a single moment of indescribable beauty, the opposing forces embraced, heaven and earth collided, and it captured our hearts with the possibilities of how things really could be, not just one day in the distant future... but today.
There is no question that we live in an incredibly unique time in history in which there is a strange mass collision of shallowness, superficiality, competing narratives that try to explain our existence, and depersonalization wrought by technology, all accompanied by a growing disdain for spirituality, in general, and religion, in specific, from a hyper-rationalistic culture.
If death is the end toward which all life is moving... then why does anything in our lives matter at all? Why ascribe any purpose to it whatsoever? It is all death in the end anyway.
Sometimes we need the desert to find our hearts and souls... and to remember who we are and what our purpose is. And no matter the endless circles and varied pathways we take in this desert life, the point at which they all converge is at the cross. For it is when we come to the cross that we choose to no longer go our own way.
In the barrios, the Church my daughter and I were a part of that day was the light of Christ breaking into darkness.
Will we ever find joy? Will love ever prevail instead of hate and violence? Will the longings of hope ever be realized into something?
We will not take part in continuing the endless cycle of death and destruction. Not with what we think. Not with what we say. Not with what we do.
We marry as a celebration, as a signpost, of how God takes two beautiful and unique individuals and brings them gloriously together as one.
I know who I am today and I know what role I play in this life because of my mother.
Father we repent and ask for forgiveness, for we know that Jesus did not spend his time isolating and targeting special “sin groups” or trying to defend his positions through arguing and debating.
"This my body, given for you" is not simply a statement reminding us of what Jesus did, but a declaration of what his Body (the Church) will continue to do.
There is a beautiful word, an elegant descriptor, that has been maligned, tarnished, lampooned, distorted, and completely misunderstood.
Spiritual transformation is a process. It is a daily walk of letting go and receiving, of dying and coming to life, of being refined into something new.
If the Church is to be the embodiment of new creation, a sign post of God’s present reign in our lives, who will nurture and guide us along the way?
We must become people of the bottom; people who are below; people who are last; people who are in the back; people who are the least.
Our awe of the cosmic Christ has been replaced by a very casual “Jesus is my bro” attitude.
Our communities are in desperate need of people who love each other and seek out Truth in love and who can hear it without egos and attitudes.
The great blessing of faith I received from my father was greater than the very foundations of the earth.
The central purpose, the grand narrative, the over-arching achievement of God is to bring heaven and earth back together as one.
You are telling me that a disembodied, spiritual heaven is not the end? I am not sure that is something I can believe.
Our future hope does not involve us as disembodied spirits floating around in the sky.
God is not giving up on the creation that was called “good” from the very beginning.
Each of you have had a part in Caroline’s life, molding her and shaping her into the person she is.
Real thanksgiving is saying right now and right now and right now, “This is the very best life can offer and I want to fully embrace it.”
When we deprive others the opportunity to serve us, we deprive them of the profound joy of serving Christ.
In solitude and silence we metaphorically come out from behind the bushes and trees and finally stand naked before God…exposed.
the Incarnation…the word becoming flesh…the logos becoming flesh…the Good News of Great Joy is not on the defensive. It is on the offensive march destroying every stronghold and every work of Satan through the word, the logos, becoming flesh in Jesus Christ and through the logos becoming flesh in our own lives.
The Christian is confronted by the paradox of the Holy Scriptures when told to consider it pure joy when faced with all kinds of trials.