Ashes Unveil What’s Inside of Me From ashes I come, and to ashes I will return. Last week, like many, I participated in an Ash Wednesday service. A time to stop. A time to recognize like all those who have…
Answering God’s call isn’t like choosing the right door
By Amy Butler Most days I’m very grateful for my conservative evangelical childhood. For one thing, I can beat almost anybody at sword drill, which has never actually come in handy since I reached adulthood, but I’m not discounting the possibility…
How can you love God but hate your neighbor? You can’t.
By Scott Dickison For those of us in the Western wing of the Christian family, yesterday was the first Sunday in Lent, which began last Wednesday and is the 40-day season of fasting and preparation leading up to Easter. But…
Ash Wednesday gets us dirty — for good reason
Ash Wednesday is special day for many Christians. I grew up in a Baptist church and never got to experience it as a child. I wish I had because it is a beautiful display of the gospel and now one…
Ashy Baptists
Ash Wednesday is an occasion to mark the beginning of Lent and be marked by ashes. To receive ashes on our forehead and hear the words, ‘You are dust and to dust you shall return’ can be a powerful reminder…
How to have a ‘good’ Good Friday
How can Good Friday be good? Good Friday is the day that Christians all around the world remember the suffering of Jesus Christ on a cross. Depictions of Jesus Christ’s suffering are immortalized within our cultural framework because of such…
Reflections of Easter
I sit in expectation of the horror of good Friday and in hopeful expectation of the work of Easter Sunday. This time of year is always the most contemplative for me, perhaps because it offers the fullest range of emotion…
Finding grace in Lent
By Amy Butler Every year as Lent approaches I try to think about some kind of intentional Lenten practice that might allow me to focus a bit more thoughtfully on spiritual inquiry. Since I’m a Baptist and try to take…
For Lent, Baptist dons orange prison garb for poor and imprisoned
By Jeff Brumley Kent McKeever’s choice of Lenten sacrifice has already generated enough stares and media scrutiny to last him a lifetime. But that’s OK, he jokes, given the trade-off: a lot less laundry to do until Easter. “It’s very…
Top 10 Things that Show You are Not taking Lent Seriously
In commemoration of the Lenten season, a top ten list of things that show you just aren’t taking Lent seriously. 10. You think Ash Wednesday is kind of like “Downtown after Five,” only on Wednesday and only once a year….
A safe space to be vulnerable
By Amy Butler Last week I watched a TED talk by University of Houston social work professor Brené Brown. In the video, Brown talks about her research on human connection. We all crave human connection, she says, but the shame…
Out of season
By Elizabeth Evans Hagan At the church I currently attend, they take the concept of Easter-as-a-season quite seriously. The scriptural phrase “He is not here, he risen as he said” is printed on the front cover of each week’s bulletin….