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The Only Condemnation was in the Commentary
I’ve reached a pretty important conclusion. God isn’t who we think He is. I realize that the Old Testament God often has a bad reputation. It might be hard to hate Jesus, unless you’re an uber-religious leader, but Jehovah of the Old Testament does some pretty terrible things. He’s harsh and demanding. Or is He? I’ve been puttering around in the Old Testament during my morning devo time for the past four months or so. Basically ever since a well-known preacher told Christians to “unhitch” from it…I know, I’m a total rebel. 🙂 So far I’ve made it through Judges, Ruth, and First Samuel. I’m working my way through Second…
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Embracing My Strength
“Do not let your adornment be merely outward…rather let it be…the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God” 1 Peter 3:4. (NKJV) How did this verse get so twisted and taken out of context that it stopped meaning having a heart that trusts Jesus and started meaning having a soft voice and quiet demeanor? I have no idea. Welcome to the crazy place where I lived during my teens and early twenties. When you spend a decade or more being told that your personality, gifts, and abilities are sin, it takes a while to recover. But I’m working on it.…
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Choosing Trust
(Re-blogged with some tweaks from a post I originally wrote a few year ago.) Looking at the ultrasound monitor, I didn’t need anyone to tell me. I knew as soon as I saw him. My baby was dead. Less than an hour later, we sat silently in a small waiting room, surrounded by dim lighting and multiple Kleenex boxes, waiting for the doctor. Four weeks ago our baby was wiggling all over that monitor, waving to us, measuring just right, looking good. And now he was dead. Why would God do this to us again? We had just lost our first baby seven months ago. By the time I started miscarrying at…
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Chasing Eden
Something isn’t right. We know it in the very core of our being. We see it every day in the news, in our relationships, and in the creation around us. We are surrounded by death. Beauty and brokenness. Hope and disappointment. The contradictions overwhelm us. Life is a struggle. Relationships hurt. We sense the wrongness. There is an emptiness within us that we cannot fill…not with money or possessions, not with job promotions or titles, not with exercise or food, not with sex, alcohol, or our drug of choice. We dim the ache by staying busy and avoiding silence. We appease the longing with social media and various forms of…
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The Value of Losing Our Faith
I’m not sure what I believe these days. I think I’m losing faith. I don’t even like going to church. I don’t know how to be a Christian any more. Scarily honest statements. Beautifully raw. Terrifying to admit even to ourselves. If you said them to the wrong person, they might have freaked out. And you may have gotten an earful of Christianese — those secret phrases and well known statements that only make sense to other Church People. There may have been panic on their faces. They might have interrupted you with Bible verses and prayer chains. I’m sorry! Perhaps you have kept your doubts and questions to yourself…
