I first posted a version of this in August of 2008. Beautiful truth like the riches of the Gospel merit repeated display.
---- ---- ----

My small group in Austin started studying through the Sonship curriculum in June of 2007, mostly meeting every two weeks, and we finished late this spring. The late Jack Miller founded World Harvest Mission and directed the development of the Sonship perspective. Sonship enfolds many things, including a relentless exposure of the idols we worship, an explication of what it looks like to live as “an orphan” and what it looks like to live as an adopted son or daughter of God.Read more

Stephanie and I saw Limitless the other night. If you haven't seen it, what follows is all SPOILERS.

Some reflections:

Among educated, middle or upper middle or upper class people, it's an old and cherished fantasy to use ALL of our brains, ALL of our potential, ALL of our talent. We're all bedeviled to varying degrees by our limitations. The many weaknesses in my character…the lack of discipline…whatever…get in the way of us being all that we could be.

This awareness is both painful and humbling on one hand, and tantalizing on the other. If.... If we could somehow crack the code and figure it out, we would be limit-less.

This is part of the Western "story" of progress, of human potential, of achievement. Again, it's an old fantasy.

It's an old story in Scripture, too. Eve, then Adam, heard a story of potential that was just outside their grasp. All they needed was to disbelieve the Story and reach out for the fruit.Read more

I have to confess, I don’t miss being a teenager.  Adolescence can be filled with all kinds of awkward and confusing moments.  Once you reach 13, you’re too old to be a kid, but too young to be an adult.  Overnight, new pimples appear in horrifying places.  And Susie, who was your best friend forever last week, won’t speak to you this week.  To top things off, that cute boy that you have a crush on doesn’t even know that you exist. For me, as for most adults I know, these kinds of events during adolescence were enough to elicit a retreat into a deep, dark hole of despair.  Whether I (in my state of teenage misery) was alone in my room or present with others, there was sure to be plenty of obvious sighing, slouching and forlorn grimacing.  Read more

God has begun the gradual metallurgy of fall. Outside my window, down to the left, He’s refining one tree into pure gold. It quivers ever so slightly each day as it moves from one degree of gilded glory to the next. Just beyond the edge of the dark green forest, I can see touches of copper and bronze. But the furnace of change heats so gradually, I cannot perceive exactly how the vista has altered from the day before. Like most things God does, it’s subdued, unhurried, and steady.

Like the trees, we too are ever-changing. We somehow lull ourselves into believing things stay in a constant state. But it’s not true. Even when we’ve graduated from those years of swift childhood and adolescent growth, we’re still bit-by-bit morphing into different people.Read more

For the first time in my life I found myself underemployed and the part-time and freelancing gigs I did have couldn't pay much and were inconsistent in hours. I had just graduated with two master's degrees from seminary and was at a loss for what to do next. On top of all of that, I was still single, my personal belongings were in storage, and I was renting a room from a family from my church. This is how I found myself on my thirtieth birthday.
 
Rewind a few years and I certainly wouldn't have envisioned all of that for my thirtieth birthday. I started what seemed to be a promising federal career at the age of 21, was surrounded with friends, actively involved in a vibrant church, and upon entry into seminary, did not seem too far away from marrying my best friend.Read more

At my very core, I am an adventure seeker.  I don’t necessarily mean this in the sense that I enjoy action-packed theme park rides or death-defying undertakings.  In fact, I’m probably not your go-to person for stomach-turning, terror-evoking exploits.  But I do believe in exploring the unknown.  Perhaps this is because, as a Christian, I’ve endeavored to embrace Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:19.  There, Jesus adjures the remaining eleven disciples to “go” and “make disciples of all nations.”   In considering this instruction and the individuals who have followed it, I have come to a certain understanding regarding the Christian life.  As a Christ follower, it seems that life sometimes includes taking risks, exploring uncharted avenues, and traveling to far-off places.  And even though I seek out and mostly enjoy all of these things, I occasionally have a longing (and even a need) to revisit familRead more

I expected him to come with wailing. Instead, he came with eyes open wide in quiet wonder. I now know that raw joy feels like a warm, squirming life clutched naked to the chest. It is alive and more beautiful than you’ve imagined.
 
He pulled a tiny fist to his mouth as his steely blue eyes met my own. We stared at one another, him blinking thoughtfully, me babbling words of delight and praise—my speech suddenly reduced to the stammered fragments of a child. I admired his long slender fingers, his soft skin, his head of downy dark hair. And my eyes bounced between his and my husband’s, like light dancing on the water on a still day.
 
When I suddenly remembered it was Sunday, nothing could have felt more fitting. For when you’ve prayed like Hannah, and been given a gift of grace like Samuel, holding that long-awaited treasure makes your heart swell with the gratitude and worship of a thousand Sundays. And you know deep within that this gift is a gift that can only be quickly offered back to the Giver in praise and adoration.
 Read more

The air hung thick and damp on the back porch of Dawn’s exotic fruit farm on the northeast corner of Australia’s Daintree rainforest. I sat on a plastic chair, one foot crossed underneath me, the other dangling a flip flop above the concrete floor of the brightly colored bed and breakfast. I began to think about what this gracefully aging Australian woman with wayward hair had just told me.
 
“Americans live to work. Australians work to live.”
 
With just three weeks left on my 10-week sabbatical on the underside of the world, I began to wonder if these words were true, and if they should mean something to me.Read more

Every Thursday, I drive through the back roads of town, park outside of a three story enchanted-looking house, and climb the stairs to the third floor apartment.  In that space, I meet with a familiar group of friends.  After catching up on the events of the week, we settle into a discussion related to a certain Bible passage, usually lingering over the questions that draw us in the most.  Presently, my friends and I are considering the book of Proverbs and discussing its meaning for the individual living within her or his community.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, we have been unable to ignore the pervasive theme of the adulteress in the first several chapters.  But in recent weeks, our discussion on this topic has led us in a direction that we did not expect.  

Instead of analyzing the intricacies of deception or critiquing the ill judgment of the one allured, have we asked ourselves, “How can the church help stem the tide of relational brokenness that we see in the world today?”  In response to this question, one group member noted the intense feelings of loneliness that persist among singles in particular.  Read more

“Do you want to get well?”  This may have seemed like a silly question for Jesus to ask a person lying ill for 38 years.  After all, the answer appears obvious.  Who would choose to struggle against persistent sickness, when an offer of healing was available?  Why watch others receive the soothing balm when you, in your own flesh, could be cured?  Surely the man near the pool of Bethesda wanted what Jesus was offering—a life of restored physical health, or more simply, just to walk again. 

In many ways, I can deeply relate to this first century story.  Although physically well, I battle other chronic ills, more spiritual and emotional in nature.  I ache for the friend who has turned away from God and I cry over the pain of unmet desires.  I pray to God about desperate and seemingly desperate situations, but sometimes I don’t hear anything in return.  I occasionally feel what C.S. Lewis described when he was swimming in the grief of his wife’s death.  Hoping to find God in his own despair, Lewis found “a door slammed in [his] face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.  After that, silence.”1   This is hardly the response one hopes to get when all resources are depleted and the last Kleenex used. 
 Read more