A rendering of Psalm 22, a prayer in the middle of feeling abandoned by God and yet looking forward to when God comes through and personal praise spills out on everyone else.
Tag: Jesus
The Gospel according to Elf
Each December, we engage in retelling our favorite stories. The all-time favorite at this time of year is of the birth of Jesus. But we’ve got other favorites that get repeated each December. And one […]
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 […]
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 […]
Christmas — God "for" us & "with" us
Christmas changes everything. It upends everything we think about God. And even more than that, it offers a completely different way of experiencing God. For in one event, it shows us that God is both […]
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer & the birth of Jesus
Each December, we engage with the same stories over and over again. On one hand, we’ve got the birth narrative of Jesus. On the other hand, we’ve got a collection of well-loved holiday movies Year […]
Beauty for ashes
I’d had one of those days. Bad news followed by more bad news. All of it weighing on me. But then I took a breath. A deep, lung-filling breath. All of a sudden, a new […]
Advent & the silence of Zechariah
One of the most-omitted Christmas stories is that of Zechariah and the angel in the temple (Luke 1:5-25). We all want to jump right to the birth of Jesus and focus on either Matthew 2 […]
Unemployed at Christmas
Unemployed at Christmas Joseph the carpenter Did not build his baby’s bed/// Shepherds left their field And their flock No longer shepherding But chasing the angels’ call instead/// Magi followed a star Not their career […]
Getting right what's wrong — why defining sin can be helpful
Sin is not a particularly fun topic, so I wouldn’t be surprised if most people avoid this post completely. But the ways we think about what’s wrong in our lives and the world around us […]
Liberty — our great ideal & our great idol
The Statue of Liberty stands in her solitary glory on Ellis Island, holding her torch aloft as a beckoning beacon and inviting those in need of her gift to seek it here in America. Liberty is a […]
The problem with inventing your own God
I was heading to Orlando for a conference and had made preparations with friends there to have someone pick me up at the airport. I’d never met the picker-upper, so I sent not just my […]
Why are we always looking for a scapegoat?
Celebrities exist so that we can lift them up and adore them only to throw them to the ground when they fail us. We love to love them. And we love to see them fail […]
How God's economy works
“It’s the economy, stupid!” Bill Clinton’s one-liner from his successful campaign against the first President Bush has echoed through every election since. There may be other issues on the table, but how the President will […]
Unforgiven
I love the Lord’s Prayer — except for one phrase. There’s one line in it that trips me up. It’s the second half of “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” I rely […]
A wider view of the Fall leads to a deeper engagement in mission
For most of my life, I viewed the primary thing wrong in the world as sin, particularly a brokenness in our individual human relationships with God. The most important thing, then, was to get people […]
Kim Davis & when faith forces you to lose your job
There’s something appealing to watching a person stick with her convictions and suffer for them. It’s the stuff of inspirational movies about inner city teachers and coaches who turn around losing teams and such. And […]
What would you be willing to sacrifice your personal happiness for?
Most of us would be willing to make sacrifices to be happier. We’d live in smaller homes, have less money, have less stuff, drink less coffee, and so on if it would guarantee that we’d […]
Get over it!
If you’re an adult, you’ve had experiences where people have said and done hurtful things to you. I have. We all have. They were painful. They were inappropriate. But they’re over. Done. Gone. In the […]
Where trust comes from
It’s a simple formula. If we want to be trusted, we’ve got to be trustworthy. But too often we expect trust without earning it. How do we learn to trust and to become worthy of trust ourselves? […]
"What do you want?" — How to want what you really want
“What do you want?” It’s the first thing Jesus speaks in John’s gospel. A question. And a simple one at that. But it’s one of the most powerful questions any of us is ever asked. […]
God's answer to a broken world
My wife had a great conversation with a friend who was raised without faith. In the conversation, our friend asked my wife a variation on a question that people have been asking ever since the […]
What's your question?
When I first watched the movie I (heart) Huckabee’s years ago, it bounced around in my head for days. In it, there is a team of existential detectives who hilariously examine people’s lives in order to determine what question drives […]
The purpose of worship — from experience to encounter
In a 2005 interview with Christianity Today, Eugene Peterson said, “Do we realize how almost exactly the Baal culture of Canaan is reproduced in American church culture? Baal religion is about what makes you feel […]
Losing ourselves in a culture of self-creation
We live in the first truly self-creating culture. You can actually make a whole new you. In the past, people were known by their relationships. Our last names are themselves family ties, suggesting that your […]
The cross & the empty tomb — bringing love and power together
The cross of Jesus is the love of God in action. The empty tomb of Jesus is the power of God in action. The problem with human love is that it lacks the power to […]
How has Easter become the most predictable Sunday of the year?
I don’t get sunrise services on Easter morning. When I look back over my life of church stuff, I can’t remember a sunrise service that I liked. I never wanted to get out of bed. […]
The gospel according to Sufjan Stevens
It’s Holy Week — the week leading up to Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter — and Sufjan Stevens has dropped a new album. He couldn’t have timed its release any better, for the album […]
"I thirst" — the 4th saying of Jesus from the cross
The first words Jesus speaks in John’s gospel form one of the most penetrating questions we as humans will ever be ask: “What do you want?” (John 1:38) We all have our wants. Some are […]
The cross, the dishes & the unpleasantness of love
Love is easy when it’s fun. Going on dates during the first days of romantic attraction is blissful. It almost doesn’t matter what you’re doing, simply being together is magical. Holding your newborn child is […]
Learning the Jesus way to be missional
When I was in college, I started writing a short play based on the Zacchaeus story. There was a man in our church named Bill who stood at an awesome 6’10” and I thought it […]
Give it your all … but stop trying so hard
Soccer practice had just ended and I was ready to head for home. But the coach had a different idea. As the other boys trickled off to their cars and awaiting dinners, the coach pulled […]
A trinitarian view of being human that corrects our either/or approaches
I was reading an excellent article, nodding all the way, until I got to the point where the author made a distinction between two types of people and then sided with one of them. From […]
238 miles of ABBA & the death of creativity
It took him more than five hours to drive to Chicago, during which time he listened to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA about 100 times in a row, stopping only for gas and other essential duties. […]
Sports, idolatry, and mission
The Incarnation. It’s a topic for sermons each December. God takes on flesh in Jesus and enters into our circumstance in the humblest of ways in order to save us. It’s one of the most […]
The importance of self-knowledge to exceeding our limitations
How good of a driver do you think you are? Top 50%? Top 90%? I don’t know where the stat came from, but years ago I read that 90% of Americans think they’re in the […]
Who are you? The real purpose of labels, names & identities
A friend of mine was once the victim of a clever prank that lasted for months. The person he and his wife had asked to house-sit for them removed all of the labels from all […]
Is humanity redeemable? Snowpiercer vs. Jesus
Occasionally, a movie will stick with me for weeks and months afterward. Sometimes, it’s a movie like Frozen with its tenacious “Let It Go” song, which won’t do what it suggests. Then there are movies of […]
Facebook and the story of your life.
The Facebook experience has been analyzed from pretty much every angle. But there’s one angle that I’ve yet to come across and that’s Facebook’s role in creating a personal narrative. With every post, every person […]