As a funeral director, I sit across from families trying to process their grief. Just about any funeral director you’ll meet will tell you that no two families are exactly alike. Some families really open up, and their faces light…
In times like these: Love of hope and hope of love
Does hope mean anything anymore? What is the point of hope in this season? I’ve asked myself those questions, along with many, many others in the preceding months and today. I look at the mess we’ve made of the United…
On building, planting and faithful questions in a time of exile
“Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there…
Ten reasons for hope in this time of dystopia
I am a huge fan of dystopian literature and film, although I am finding I am not a particularly big fan of actually living in a dystopia. And with staying at home so much, I am not sure my partner…
Amid this pandemic, can we say with Julian of Norwich, ‘All shall be well’?
More than six centuries later, Julian of Norwich still speaks to modern Christians caught, like her, in the clutches of another “Great Pestilence.”
I’ll get to hope. For now, I need to sit in the ashes and mourn
This pandemic is not a theological crisis. It’s a moral one. We would do well in this moment to take the prophet Jeremiah’s advice to “put on sackcloth, lament and howl.” We need to mourn and rage and contemplate what led us to this moment.
Sermons about Sodom are timely, but not for reasons you may think | #intimeslikethese
The story of Lot and Sodom is relevant and timely, if we see it as a story of radical hospitality.
Clinging to hope in a river of despair
Never before in my lifetime have I feared for democracy, for the rule of law, for basic truthfulness and honesty, for human decency and kindness. But the cosmic Christ still calls us to live in hope, even when despair seems strong.
From spreading ashes to administering them: Ash Wednesday for a broken and grieving minister
On Ash Wednesday, I will try to reconcile with a Jesus who stands before me, ready to offer the love I desperately need. I will try to find his hand amid my darkness, a brokenness that has nothing to do with my sin.