The latest from my blog
I write on all sorts of topics such as Celebration & Wonder, Community & Discipleship, Intimacy with Christ, and Redemption & Grace. I share my random thoughts in Miscellaneous Musings.
I’m glad you’ve joined me!
Purposeful Suffering
I ran into an old friend today. He is suffering. Every time I see him he is suffering from physical and emotional maladies. His life seems to feel more and more hopeless as time moves along, and I just don't really know what to say. It's hard, but the suffering is...
Hypomone
I sat at a friend’s dining room table, the sunshine pouring over my left shoulder and warming the back. She tells me she has been studying James, specifically where He tells us to “consider it all joy… when (we) encounter various trials” because our trials produce...
Vanity of Vanities!
I used to read Ecclesiastes and scratch my head. Solomon was just a little too wise for me, and his melancholy nature didn't resonate with my desire to see a cup half-full. But after this clarifying past year and a half, I am starting to understand the book a little...
The Kancamagus Highway
We drove the Kancamagus Highway in early October, prime time for the spectrum of Fall colors... but it wasn't. The colors were beginning to pop, but they hadn't hit peak yet. In fact, many of the colors had yet to change. Smiles kept remarking on how sad he felt...
The Trickle Down of Grace
Slinking into the rocking chair, I let the spine fall open on my well-worn Bible, like an invitation into Majesty. I glance down at the page, and my eyes fall on a bold red rectangle, squaring off words. 1 Corinthians 12:22-26, to be exact. Leaning over the...
Ode To A Cute Boy On Our Anniversary
Twenty years ago, my dad walked me through a field on a misty Fall day, to meet the man I had already committed my life to. With a twinkle in his eye, and a smile on his lips, he asked, "Last chance. You wanna turn back?" "No way, Daddy," I retorted and we walked...
Bouncy Ball Brain
Lately, my brain has been feeling like a bouncy ball someone unleashed on the inner walls of my skull. It's not pleasant. In fact, today I was feeling snappy and unkind in my heart because of the anxious feeling in my brain. I think I might be trying to spin too...
Legacy in the Wake
My dear friend, Missy, was unabashedly weeping as she spoke of her precious mother. She told me how her mom doesn't bemoan the future while she watches her husband's lungs fill with scars, knowing she is sojourning into the path of a widow. Instead, she is living in...
Enduring Persecution with Christ in His Proper Place
I watched a video of a pastor being interviewed from a country where his faith is illegal. He lays his earthly life aside for the heavenly Kingdom daily, and goes right on preaching the Gospel to anyone who has ears to hear. Because the worth of the Gospel surpasses...
Discipleship Is Not Condescending.
I once knew a family who thought of people like investments. They would "pour their lives out" for others, but didn't know how to just be-friend them. It never felt safe or genuine with them. There were others in my life, however, who nourished me in every way...
America: Jonah or Nahum?
It appears as though we are watching, in real time, the collapse of America the Great. It's easy to read that as a political statement, and although we can see the unseen war of the heavenlies playing out on the battlefield of earth, this is not intended to be taken...
The Pacemaker Queen
I received an email from my stepdad a couple of days ago which caused all of us recipients to start praying hard and fast. It said that my mom's pacemaker had shifted and broke through her skin. As though it wasn't enough that my mom, in her mid-60's, already had to...