(Scroll down for article links)
Theology is lived out not in ethereal thought, but here on the ground, inside physical bodies in the tangible world. The word was made flesh, said John. So if you’re clicking through for Greek root words and systematic doctrine, it’s not here. Here it’s about making room for mystery, and seeing the presence of God imbued in the everyday, praising him for coffee as well as grace, for wool socks as well as the incarnation, and for marveling at the unknowable mystery of it all.
“The purpose of theology – the purpose of any thinking about God – is to make the silences clearer and starker to us, to make the unmeaning – by which I mean those aspects of the divine that will not be reduced to human meanings – more irreducible and more terrible, and thus ultimately more wonderful. This is why art is so often better at theology than theology is.” –Christian Wiman
“I do not meet God in a vacuum. I meet Him in the world He has provided for me to meet Him in — in a world of events and of places, of history (time and space), in a world of lives of people and their records of their encounters. I meet God in this world — in the world of these things.” -Rich Mullins
When Rest Requires the Work of Faith
There’s a big difference between choosing when to rest, and choosing to have an attitude of rest.
Deconstructing Fundamentalism (Without Rejecting Jesus)
Morality culture harms; it doesn’t produce Jesus-followers.
7 Things Evangelicals Can Learn from the Liturgical Church
We can trust His hand enough to stop being threatened by the history in the gap between the Apostle Paul and Martin Luther.
The Autumn Liturgy of Rest: How Seasons Can Prepare our Hearts
Rest doesn’t happen on its own. We must fight for rest.
On the Epiphany, Dirty Bathrooms, and Hallowed Ground
I too often see only wilderness with my blinded eyes, but these rust-colored tiles and this lumpy berber — this can be hallowed ground.
Why Celebrations & Beauty Still Matter in a Broken World
How can I talk about pretty things when there’s all this brokenness everywhere we turn?
And I’ll Sing in the Land of my Sojourn
When you know everything around you lies in shadow, waiting for the great awakening, then there’s beauty in everything broken.
A Secret about Community: Finding Worship and Purpose in the Mundane
It’s not the task itself that’s categorized as mundane or profound. It’s our attitude toward it.
That’s the one thing you can’t do, when you’re a sojourner
They tell you just to be there. And that’s the one thing you can’t do, when you’re a sojourner.
Don’t Let Darkness Cause You to Hide From Beauty
We see the fear and the disaster and the starvation..and we also see the flower pushing through the rubble of it all.
The life of a sojourner is not a rhythm…it is whiplash, it is an awkward slow dance, or a holding pattern at best.
Sojourning means you tend to your fires and your campsite wherever you are, keeping the light alive from dawn to dusk, no matter if you’ll pull up stakes tonight or in three months or in a year.
A Mountain Can’t Hide the Light
As much as we want to fold up the memories and draw lines around them and never travel their pathways again, memories don’t compartmentalize.
She touched his coat — and didn’t have to be sorry! Condemnation, gone. Shame, gone. Guilt, gone, every last drop.
In Death, Life Becomes Everything
Death, in all its soul-wrenching grief and sorrow, shows us perspective.
On this morning, briefly, a curtain of twisted fog and quiet drifted in and rested lightly overhead.
We were created to know beauty beyond what our senses can take in.
It is Early in the Days of New Grief
Like the river against the stones, the ocean against the glass, and the mouth of the ocean against the changing shore, the grief will change me.
The Thing About Life is How Fragile it is
We can’t push oxygen where it needs to go. We’re no life-givers.
It’s Okay to be Happy with a Calm Life
“For as his share is who goes down to the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage; they shall share alike.”
On Grief and the Golden Thread
I remember where I was sitting when I heard it was coming, and how I got up out of my chair and ran.
Since I was a little girl and first began to know of wrongs, I have been burdened.
Sometimes I think the only way I’ll ever write a book is if I tell myself all the words are only just for me.
Maybe when the writing stops coming, maybe it’s because I’m letting things chase the words away. Maybe I need to chase everything else away, and the words will return.
When Home Can’t be Pinned Down
I can’t visit home whenever I want to, but only when the road we’re on lets us go there, and maybe that’s the beauty of it.
—
(I’m available for product, book, and curriculum reviews — and social media promotions. Want to work with me?)
