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Deep Calls to Deep is insights, stories, and lessons with the intention of cultivating a deeper level of contemplation and wisdom within us.
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.
One of the most contentious topics within American Christianity is the role followers of Jesus should or should not play within politics and government.
That is the great irony of the Incarnation. We temporarily gather to celebrate something we have no intention of becoming ourselves.
God was there, as God is here now, appealing to all people to resist the ideological forces that are working to strip others of their humanity.
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.
If we were really serious about picking up our crosses daily and becoming servants of all, racial reconciliation would be one of the most essential tasks of the white Christian.
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 idea of burning in Hell for eternity is utterly inconsistent with a God that we are told looks exactly like Jesus.
We are not being saved from something, but saved into something.
The most misunderstood word in all of Christianity.
Hiding behind the phrase “biblically correct,” is actually a convenient way for those who wear a “Christian” label to completely ignore Jesus.
The love of God is radically offensive to those who do not understand it.
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?
God has unconditionally and preemptively forgiven all people, all people, all people, for all time.
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
'Love your enemies' ought to be sufficient.
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.
We have not been given the task of shutting the door or preventing "sinners" from entering into the Kingdom of God.
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.
Words and experience can only take us so far and that destination is painfully and woefully short of God's love-essence.
Throughout the Ages, God has absorbed the insults of his accusers and endured the mischaracterizations of his followers.
For the words we use can be powerful weapons that wound, kill, and destroy, or instruments of blessing, healing, and life.
Religious expectation has never been the point of this life. And when you finally realize that, you will be free.
I'm not sure how to describe the feelings that go beyond heartbroken and devastated. Honest to God, I don't.
In my experience, the only place where the superficial veneer is stripped away, where pretense is obliterated, where cosmetic application fails, and where vulnerability is unmasked and triumphantly exposed... is in the presence of a loving, non-judgmental, other-centered group of trusted friends.
The truth is that the church ought to be the community in which people can ask the toughest questions and wrestle through the most difficult topics because it has the grace enough to push the edges and love enough to handle the tension.
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.
It doesn't matter which side of the political spectrum you are on- This country is not your hope. This political system is not your hope. This government is not your hope.
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.
An absolutely essential parable to the Church for this political season...
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.
How ought Christians view politics and the government in light of the Old Testament?
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.
There has been increasing and bewildering confusion amongst Christians as to how we ought to engage with the political system, generally, and for whom we ought to vote, specifically.
We are the hands and feet of Christ. The government is not. The Republicans are not. The Democrats are not. And whether they say they are "Christians" or not is utterly and spectacularly inconsequential. As we have outsourced our purpose as the Church to the government and politicians, we have failed our country and our communities.
Right now our conversations are not conversations.
I know who I am. I know what I signed up for. I know whose life I have chosen to pattern my life after. I know that patterning my life after Jesus comes with a cost.
There has always been an overwhelming temptation for people of faith to fixate on and obsess over how we worship God, rather than focusing on how our worship ought to change us.
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?
Fear has absolutely no room in the life of a person consumed by the complete and perfect love of God.
For even in the face of death, our own blood will cry out and give testimony.
I do not need any legislation to pronounce the freedom I already have, and will continue to have, despite my changing circumstance or situation.
The homeowner took a stand against every single person who violated the covenants.
The church of the future is around a table- breaking bread and taking the cup together. It is where we move from a personal, individualized faith to a place of shared, relational, and communal faith as a family.
The reason we can demonstrate the self-sacrificial love of Christ to the world rather than by fighting back is because we are people who do not fear death.
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.
If we aren’t living like Christ in the present, when times are relatively good, then we will never live like Christ when things get difficult.
One Sunday we showed up at our rented church building. Someone had spray painted a Nazi swastika on the front of the building.
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.
If we are God's ambassadors then we can't give up on even the most hard headed, hard hearted, stubborn mule of a person.
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.
There are so many positions, angles, self-interested ideologies, and half-truths surrounding us that we are not sure what truth is anymore.
I can courageously face another day, another week, another year because I have a family ready to receive me and shower me with love and acceptance.
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.
We have erroneously viewed the Kingdom of Heaven as a disembodied future existence and destination for Christians.
Each of you have had a part in Caroline’s life, molding her and shaping her into the person she is.
The truth of God that cuts through every liberal and conservative position is God's profound love of all life.
Can you imagine America loving our enemies rather than engaging in conflict with them? Me either.