But. It can be one of the most frustrating words, pulling the carpet from beneath our feet. “You would be a great addition to our team, but the position has already been filled.” At the same time, […]
Category: Faith
Sitting down for the national anthem & other prophetic actions
During these slow days before the NFL and college football regular seasons get rolling, sports news has been filled with Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback. It’s not because he’s been putting up stellar preseason […]
Coaching sports & life
In preparation for the upcoming volleyball season, I spent some time jotting down some core values and practices I want my players and their parents to know so that they understand my expectations of them. […]
Truth & feelings
In a culture where feelings are king, we have little tolerance for truth. I’ve watched someone be shunned for the past two years by those my friend spoke a simple but powerful truth to. It was an […]
Psalm 131 — from ambition to contentment
I am an ambitious person, with hopes and dreams for myself. I am a true American, pursuing my own happiness. My heart isn’t quiet. It’s in turmoil, boiling with my ambitions. Unsettled by my striving, […]
Regaining our humor in an overly serious political climate
A few months ago, I was with a group of teenagers, waiting to be let into a county fair. That may or may not sound like fun to you, but the group was in good […]
The Lord’s Prayer — insistently passive praying
The Lord’s Prayer offers us an absolutely radical approach to God that even 2,000 years of having it as our most basic prayer still subverts and reorients the lives of those who pray it. Sadly, the […]
Prepare to share (or, one practice for an uncontainable faith)
When I was growing up, the churches I was a part of had two services each Sunday morning that weren’t identical like most multi-service churches now. The first service was shorter, about half an hour, […]
Old words that won’t go away
I was pulled aside by the staff leader of the camp I was working at one summer. I was expecting a pat on the back by was shocked by angry and cutting words I didn’t […]
The Lord’s Prayer — foundation for our praying imaginations
When my friend Scott began following Jesus a few years ago, prayer was a new idea for him. In fact, the thought of it was somewhat terrifying. How do we approach the Master of the […]
Regaining a childlike imagination
As we get older, our bodies grow but our imaginations shrink. We know more and question less. If we are to engage with the vastness who is God, we need to regain a childlike imagination […]
Political angst & Psalm 58
Politicians have always been corrupt. Not all of them are, of course. But always, God’s people have struggled under the weight of evil leaders. Always, the presence of the powerful who use their power inappropriately […]
I’ve been bought! (And so have you.)
I’m not aware of putting a “for sale” sign on my soul, but it seems that there are endless attempts to buy it. Sports keeps trying to buy my soul. And far too often I […]
Declaration of Dependence
I am glad to be an American. There’s so much about my country that I’m grateful for. But there’s something that catches inside me when we celebrate Independence Day each July 4. While I’m glad […]
In a world against things, what are you for?
As our presidential election cycle continues to heat up, I’m reminded of the challenge a friend of mine posed on Facebook last time around, a challenge that went mostly unanswered. He asked his many Facebook […]
Rediscovering hope in a hopeless culture
We live in one of the most hopeless, now-oriented cultures in human history. We can hardly look past today, much less the next election without shaking our heads. Our imaginations are filled with dystopian, future-shock […]
God thinks you’re more resilient than you do
God has a pretty high view of you. Sure, he knows you’re a sinner. He’s pretty aware of that fact. But he’s also got a pretty high view of what you can handle. He’s fine […]
What’s the opposite of a terrorist?
After the terrorist massacre in Orlando, I’ve been thinking about this question: What’s the opposite of terrorism? We have grown accustomed to acts of terror in world news, but when they happen in our protected […]
You are a theologian
If you’ve ever prayed or said anything about God, you are a theologian. Writing books and having PhDs has nothing to do with it. Rather, engaging with God has everything to do with it. Having […]
Away on Father’s Day
My dear kids, thanks for making me a dad. I’ve been a father for 19 years now, thanks to you, and this is the first Father’s Day that I’ve had to be away from you. […]
The Orlando attack & the culture clash behind it
The horrific assault on Pulse Orlando and the 50 or so deaths caused by one man with guns brings up all kinds of questions. For some, this is a question about access to guns and […]
Getting into God's Story
I was reading a book written by a friend of mine when I found myself in it. Just for a couple of paragraphs, I read almost word for word in the pages of his book […]
The vacationer's prayer
God of creation, God of rest, God who guides, God who protects, Lead us on this vacation journey. Keep us from harm on our travels, as we step out of our safe routines; Keep us […]
Prophets & comedians
Can a comedian or a poet save the world? Back in April 2016, U2’s Bono suggested that the best way to combat terrorism isn’t with bombs, but with laughter. He said, “Don’t laugh. I think comedy […]
Preaching that jams the machine
The best preachers are poets, using words to open up windows in the minds and souls of those listening to a world ignored and unseen by a world mesmerized by trinkets and tech. As such, […]
3 practices for walking through grief
When my sister was killed by a drunk driver, we were crushed. We were not unique in our pain — many suffer similar sorrows — but we suffered out pain uniquely, as all do. But […]
When my son got mugged
When my son called to tell us that he’d been mugged, I was furious. My stomach roiled at the thought of his broken tooth and the stitches his companions had to get. The assailants were […]
All prayer is theology — so what kind of a theologian are you?
“He’s one of our praying theologians.” I was talking with Eugene Peterson about a theologian I’d been reading when Eugene made the comment and it stopped me in my tracks. A praying theologian? Don’t all […]
The gospel on a mountain bike
The text came last night: “Be ready at 8:30.” It was ominous, but in a promising sort of way. So, morning came. I dressed, took kids to school, and got my bike ready. My friend […]
God in the in-between
We tend to focus on the big events, the landmark moments, the photographable experiences. With our kids, it’s the first day of school, scoring the winning goal, getting baptized, performing in a play, getting dressed […]
13 reasons why King Saul wasn't as bad as Sunday school teachers make him out to be
I have spent much of my life thanking my old Sunday School teachers for introducing me to the Scriptures and to Jesus. But I have also spent much of my adult life undoing poorly interpreted […]
God is furious (in his love for us)
God is not boring as many have made him out to be. Far too often, how we represent God and his love for us could not be more milquetoast, tepid, and nauseating. Saccharine and sentimentalist […]
Recovering the lost art of friendship
I picked up the phone yesterday and called Steven, a friend of more than two decades. He couldn’t answer right away but called me back as soon as he was free. Now, Steven and I don’t […]
Pain gives definition to life
I celebrate the anniversaries of friends whose marriage survived the dark and harrowing days after his infidelities were discovered. I celebrate the birthdays of the son of friends whose asthma has almost taken down to […]
18 things every pastor and worship leader needs to consider
1. Worship without silence leaves no room for awe. 2. The words “cool” and “pastor” don’t go together. For those who are trying: Stop it. (This applies to worship leaders, too.) 3. Prayer doesn’t need […]
The idolatry of busyness
Busyness is a form of self-idolatry that obscures everyone and everything else in a rush of self-important activity. This is why the psalmists repeatedly call us to wait, to be still, to look for God, […]
Living in a world with teeth
God is not afraid of danger, pain, or death. And he’s not afraid of seeing his loved ones on paths that will lead us through all three. In fact, he guarantees that every one of us […]
How little things become heavy things
We dumped everything out of my son’s backpack that he didn’t need to take to school that day. What was left was about 1/3 of what he’d stuffed into it. And when he put it […]
The best Mother's Day poem ever & the meaning of grace
As a kindergarten kid, walking home the few blocks from school, I would pick flowers from the front yards I passed and give them to my mother when I got home. My gesture was both […]
At the center of God's heart
Lord, forgive me for forgetting those you love. Forgive me for hearing the Scriptures as if they were all about me and my salvation and not about you and your reconciling redemption of what is […]
Don't vote for evil.
As this year’s presidential campaign continues, I am asked more and more often, “What do I do? I can’t decide who to vote for. I don’t like either of the two main candidates.” Now, there […]
We need better stories for better imaginations
We know who we are by the stories we tell. Better stories lead to better living. If I tell a lot of stories about how busy I am, busyness defines my identity. If I tell […]
Peace by piece
This is a busted up world filled with partial people, including me. It’s telling that the words heal, health, and whole all derive from the same root. To be truly healthy humans, we need to […]
Jesus and the end of racism
It’s a simple vision. Every kind of people. A countless throng of them. After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, […]
If God had a hobby, what would it be?
What is it that God is up to? What is it that God preoccupies himself with? If he had a hobby, what would it be? The answer is simple and obvious and yet we get it […]
Evil is real — the Gospel according to Harry Potter, part 2
My kids were too little to read and take in the Harry Potter books when they were being written and released, so my wife and I waited for, bought, and read aloud to one another each […]
"Magic" is everywhere — The Gospel according to Harry Potter, part 1
I have been reading and rereading the Harry Potter books since J.K. Rowling started publishing them. I can’t say I got my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone the day it was released, but […]
My soul is starving
My soul is starving. This North American way of life is feeding and over-feeding me in all the wrong ways. Too much entertainment, not enough reflection. Too much gossip, not enough prayer. Too much ego, […]
Reading the Bible like a novel
There are parts of the Bible which are like a manual. But not a lot. It’s mostly story, poetry, and dream language. Even the manual parts aren’t all that much like a manual. Sure, there […]
Credit cards, usury & the new slavery
There was a time when usury was a punishable offense. Now, it is business as usual. And it has created a whole new form of slavery called massive credit card debt. Usury is the over-charging […]
Faith is a game of follow the leader
When I was a kid, there was a group of boys on our short, dead-end street who would play together. Among the many outdoor games we’d play was, of course, follow the leader. And Greg Smith […]
Sorry, Tennessee, but making the Bible your state book is probably a bad idea
Today, the Tennessee Senate approved House Bill 0615, which designates the Bible as its state book. I think that’s a well-intentioned mistake. While the Bible speaks to every person in Tennessee and to all the world […]
What do I do when forgiveness feels impossible?
I didn’t get much sleep last night. Memories of slander and of shunning and contempt aimed at someone I love had me wrestling with bitterness and anger. Feelings of hurt and anger are nothing new. […]
The Jesus who confronts our pain & shame
I am a strategically self-protective person. I hide my faults and weaknesses. I weigh my words. I hedge my bets. Because of this, there’s a side to Jesus that I find particularly disturbing. It’s a […]
Bono: The unsettling question asker
Bono is a master question asker, peppering every U2 album with questions, rarely paired with answers. Questions send us on quests. They pull us out of ourselves, requesting that we get up and move and […]
Smaller, weaker, dumber
What happens to the country when you have a mediocre leader? What happens when the country is in the middle of a war and he sends the army home? When the only people left to […]
Deliver us from Atrophy
What has happened to our ability to write, to read, to appreciate the beauty and mystery of words? In Eugene Peterson’s book Answering God, he discusses three forms of language — language that informs, language […]
The gospel according to March Madness
I love college sports and so do my kids. And as much as we enjoy college football’s bowl season, NCAA basketball’s March Madness is the highlight of our sports viewing year. But there’s something disturbing […]
8 biblical truths about politics
The biblical perspective on politics is multi-faceted, calling us to engage in the care for communities while refusing to put much fear or hope into political outcomes. 1. Political engagement is important. The Old Testament is […]
I don't like what you said, but it doesn't make you wrong
My feelings were hurt by something I had overheard and I was determined to get even. So, I wrote a nasty letter. (This was back in the days when people wrote letters.) In it, I […]
Oneness: God's vision for marriage & for the whole world
I’ve seen too much pain in the gender wars in the church, too much using the Scriptures as a weapon. As a result, I came to avoid passages like Eph. 5:22-33. It was only when […]
Being right, but acting badly
I hate it when I lose my temper and the moral high ground. I hate that part of me that blows it when I’m in the right and damages the truth in the process. I’ve […]
Invited in
David lay in bed, his heart pounding in his chest. All else was quiet and he could feel the thumping through his body. It scared him. Earlier that day, his mother had told him about […]
Faith is a continuing conversation
This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to listen to a friend of mine (also named Pete) preach. He started the sermon with a clip from a movie we’d seen together several years before and […]
When superheroes aren't so super
My family watches a lot of superhero TV shows and movies. Just about every Marvel and DC release is consumed with relish, even the schlocky ones. We need heroes. They embody our desires for ourselves. […]
Finding the purpose in our suffering
Pain is one of the most personal things any of us ever experiences. Whether physical or emotional, pain has the ability to focus our attention unlike almost any other human experience. This past week, I […]
The 2 things essential to living a graced life
Everything good in my life has been given to me. My life itself. My wife. My children. My friendships. My body, with its unique physical abilities. My mind, with its unique and often odd ways of […]
Theology for everyday life
Too often there is a disconnect between what we believe and how we live. There’s Sunday worship and there’s the rest of life. We know there ought to be a connection between the two. In […]
Pastor of the playground, or How to join God in the work He's doing in the world
I was listening to a friend talk about the frustrations of being an elementary school recess duty. In doing her job, she spent most of her time trying to enforce playground rules, which meant she was […]
The gospel according to Kanye
Like everyone in our media-drenched culture, I get a lot out of celebrity screw-ups. We love the abilities that celebrities share with the world — whether they are musicians, athletes, politicians, actors, artists, authors, or […]
What does the Holy Spirit do?
What would the Christian life look like without the Holy Spirit? To answer that question, I ask an oddly similar one: What would the world look like without Garfield the cat? Personally, I’ve never liked the […]
The book that taught me to read like a pastor
I had just finished reading Morgan’s Passing by Anne Tyler and hated it. Morgan was no hero, I fumed. He was selfish from start to finish. His silly outfits. His affair. He was all about […]
1 year in blogging … 1 job offer
When I starting blogging a year ago, I didn’t expect to earn a penny at it. I just started writing and didn’t stop. A friend who has written nine books told me that seven of […]
I am so out of control
Ever take stock of your life like they do at a retail store? Checking the inventory on the shelves, the stuff everyone sees? Totaling up everything in the back that no one sees but you? […]
The God who doesn't shame us for having questions
Some friends and I were sitting around the dinner table, talking about Thomas. The Bible calls him The Twin, but we’ve settled on calling him The Doubter. Poor guy. Thomas has a bad rep. Partly, […]
Why we ash & why we fast
It’s Ash Wednesday. It’s one of those holy days with which I have an odd relationship. I went to St. Monica Catholic High School as a Protestant. My Dad had been excommunicated from the Catholic Church […]
Creating islands of community in a sea of loneliness
In the book The Martian (which the movie is based on), an astronaut is accidentally left on Mars during a storm when the rest of the crew believes he is dead. He survives all kinds of […]
From Bible reading to Bible living
Followers of Jesus have always had a sense that our Bible reading ought to lead to a change in the way we live our lives. We are followers, after all, and following has action at […]
Following the Jesus who follows us
Do we follow Jesus or does he follow us? The question is less simple than it lets on. One of Jesus’ signature quotes is, “Follow me.” Simple. Direct. Unmistakable. Evocative. He looks an individual in […]
Who speaks grace into your life?
I try to duck and dodge from it, but the reality of my sin is always before me. It’s ugly. It’s embarrassing. It’s persistent. But the grace of our Lord is just as real, just as […]
The beauty of stretch marks
Stretch marks are a sign of having given birth. If we don’t have them literally or metaphorically, we probably haven’t given birth. But if we do have stretch marks, we have taken part in the […]
How social media messes up our experience of community
Control. That’s the problem with social media. I’m in control. You’re in control. Our social media worlds revolve around us like planets around a sun. It’s the web and I am the spider, sitting plumply […]
How we know God
The only way to know God is to live in his love and to share it with others. This is how the Scriptures put it: Beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from […]
Caring for our neglected souls
We live in a culture that knows almost nothing about souls. The word is used so rarely, it may soon drop out of the language altogether. And who treats us like we have souls? We […]
When God dumps out your toy box … it must be time to play!
You can always tell what toys my kids are into, because they’re all over the house. I do a lot of cleaning up of the toys behind my kids. But they just keep dumping them out again. […]
Still true 60 years later
Jim Elliot died 60 years ago. He was 28. His love for God led him to Latin America, where he was eventually killed by the Waodoni people he was reaching out to. The outcome of […]
Listening to MLK with my daughter
Like everyone else, I’m grateful for a 3-day weekend, thanks to Martin Luther King Day observance. It has given me the chance to take my daughter to a volleyball tournament, where she is playing teams from […]
God hides nothing
Keep looking. You’ll see him!
Weakness is the way
As I grow older, I am becoming more and more aware of my weaknesses, my limitations, my inabilities. My eyes are growing worse. It’s harder for me to stay in shape. I forget things easily. My […]
The not-knowing of being a parent
“So, Mom, you raised five kids. What did you learn?” We were sitting in the small family room of our tiny one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver. My parents had come more than 1000 miles to see […]
Tired of myself
“I’m tired of myself.” The words struck me as I listened to an interview with author Donald Miller several years ago on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Miller is a writer who explores faith through telling his […]
The Lord of the Rings & the Bigger Story
I first read The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy trilogy, when I was in 5th grade. The books were having a resurgence after Tolkien’s death and bands like Led Zeppelin were referencing Mordor […]
The sanity of Sabbath-keeping
One of the most life-changing books that I’ve ever read is Marva Dawn’s Keeping the Sabbath Wholly: Ceasing, Resting, Embracing, Feasting. In it, she explains how Sabbath-keeping isn’t so much a matter of obligation, but of […]
Will I love God's baby as much as my own?
The book of Genesis is about babies. And as we read, we discover having babies is rough business. Abraham and Sarah are promised babies. Lots of babies. But when it comes down to it, getting […]
Following the Wild Goose & not the wild geese
Poets and artists are among our best companions in the life of faith. They come at things from unique angles and expose things about us and the world and God that we’d never seen or heard […]
Celebrating marriage — including the dark parts
“Marriage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” I was sitting in Eugene Peterson’s class on Ephesians at Regent College when he said those words. He didn’t elaborate and I think I missed the rest […]
Chuck Norris & the image of God
I’ve been thinking about the most powerful human being ever to live. And no, I don’t mean Jesus. I mean Chuck Norris — martial arts expert, movie & TV star, and Internet phenomenon. Here are […]