I’ve got a little beef with a beautiful song. It’s an old favorite about love. The refrain is amazing ‘Your love never fails, it never gives up, never runs out on me’. I’ve sung it loud and proud and even better than that - found the words to be true in my everyday life. Love never fails. My problem with the song emerges at the end of the verse with this line, ‘one thing remains’. I like those words but they just aren’t true. One thing does not remain. Three things do.
Read MoreHello friends. Thank you so much for your support and encouragement and prayer! It is such an honor to be invited to do what I do and to do it with support fills me with gratitude on a daily basis! I can’t believe we are already through a quarter of 2019, Wow! The time has flown by and I’ve been so awed by all that God is doing in this world.
Here are a few updates to keep you in the loop.
Read MoreI think I might be completely wrong about about the fickleness of the crowd those thousands of years ago in Jerusalem. What if the crowd wasn’t fickle at all? What if they never changed their tune? Don’t get me wrong, I’m convinced they yelled out Hosanna at the top of their lungs… I just don’t think that word means what I think that word means.
Read MoreThis poem was written as I dreamt of all girls rising towards the sun.
Read MoreI know, I know. It’s Christmas, and I’m talking about a genocide. Oh wait, I keep forgetting those are more related than we think. I forget how divorced the Hallmark glow of a nice and happy Christmas is from the reality Jesus faced: unwelcome, global apathy, violence and fear, difference and prejudice, disunity and poverty. It was a bloody entry for Jesus in a violent and cruel world. Can you envision all the children killed to try and stop Him? Darkness trying its best to extinguish the light of the world.
Read MoreI’ve spent a lot of time over the years looking for blame. Not about blindness per-se but about a lot of injustices - a lot of systemic, genetic, problematic issues that someone needs to take responsibility for. I usually blame the ‘authorities’, then culture, then the government, then the communities, then the church, then the men, eventually, I even get to looking in the mirror. And to be honest, there is a lot of blame to go around.
Read MoreI’ve been contemplating gratitude lately. It must be the pumpkin spice and leaves turning color that prompt me to think about thankfulness. It reminds me that it’s not a ‘extra’ blessing sort of attitude that I need to cultivate once a year or during special events that warm my heart and make me utterly grateful but it’s more like a weapon to survive the onslaught of an in-grateful world. Entitlement, dis-satisfaction, greed, the ever present sense of needing more, wanting more, deserving more, the constant sense that I’m not enough or don’t have enough or am lacking something… it’s like my brain is constantly roving around for a snack that I just can’t find… salty? sweet? new car? Latest model? outfit? haircut? Nothing seems to do. Nothing seems to fill.
Read MoreI’ve been witnessing the miracle of the season shift. To make room for new things, nature lets go of the old. Nature lets things die in order to make room for new life. But sometimes even nature needs some help. I’m figuring this out through my padawan gardening interests. (Gardners beware: this post will seem very obvious but be gentle with me).
Man, is it ever hard to tell what a weed is. Just saying. The best I could figure is that it grows really fast, bears no fruit and has no beauty. Although that’s not even always the case. My 8 year old brought home his school project to convince me that weeds were plants too (a defacto weeding #timesup campaign). I decided that he could plant a weed garden if he really felt compassion for the weeded ones but that I wanted to help my existing garden grow. I’d start by weeding a lovely patch in my backyard that someone else had planted. I felt a bit responsible to tell you the truth.
Read MoreIt's time. Well, to be honest, it's way past time. It's time for women to speak, with authority and skill from stages and platforms everywhere. And I'm not talking about women speaking to other women, as important and significant as that is, it's time for women to be part of the main voice the whole church is listening to. Why?
Read MoreKnowledge is overrated until it leads to a change in behaviour. Knowledge unhinged from reality is quite literally useless. I can know anything I want to know and still be lacking in the way to live fully. When I was a kid I used to watch Fantasy Island. I know this dates me. But there was this one episode I have never forgotten. There was an incredibly smart, well read, man whose fantasy was to be able to do everything he had read about. So, something crazy would happen (like he was attacked by sword wielding assailants) and he would respond triumphantly (with great swordsman skill). The person he was with would be surprised and say, ‘I didn’t know you knew how to sword fight?’ And he would say, ‘well, I have read about it!’.
I want this fantasy for everyone. Think about it. What if we actually knew HOW to do WHAT we already know? What if instead of just memorizing scripture verses we LIVED THEM OUT? How much of a difference would that make in this world??
Read MoreI read a book a few years back called 'How The Brain Changes Itself' and it debunked a lot of myths I had believed about myself. I had thought that my brain was static. That whatever things it had learned up until my adulthood was what I had to work with. Actually, I had believed that it was even worse than that because I did a fair amount of drugs as a teenager and figured that my memory 'issues' were most likely related to the damage I did to my brain which was now stuck in that condition. When I read that book it introduced the truth that our brains are dynamic not static. Which means that they are in the process of becoming and changing and shifting and learning ALL THE TIME. Your brain never stops making connections and new connections. It is discovering ways of functioning better and healing areas that have been damaged and creating new ways of doing the same thing when the old thing becomes blocked somehow. It's amazing. And SO hopeful.
Read MoreListen. This is much harder than it first sounds. Listening is an incredibly valuable way of beginning your peace making journey. Listening is an act of solidarity with the person you are trying to hear. And this is where we get a bit specific. Whose voice have you not heard? And how can you begin to make some peace by choosing to listen to the voices of those whom you don’t know? There is a beautiful saying, ‘an enemy is someone whose story you have not yet heard’. At the heart of every human being is a sacred beginning. And to find that human heart can take some uncovering of our own prejudice and distorted perspective and the only way to get to that divine connection of a shared humanity is to LISTEN to each other.
Read MoreMaybe this season of lent is another faithful invitation from a God who knows we need to reclaim the desert spaces of our cluttered and barren lives. Maybe the love we crave and the violent cultural norms we've come to accept instead of challenge are evidence of a deep need we have, right now to be re-shaped into the image of Jesus. I'm praying for Florida, and for the United States as they grapple with the reality of yet another school shooting THIS YEAR. I'm praying for all those seeking love and finding themselves alone and afraid and desperate on valentines day. I'm praying for all of us really. To take the Ashes of our hollow praises and easy choruses and reclaim the desert space in our lives to make room for the God who is a safety, an adventure, a wild wilderness, a trainer, a healer, a gatherer, a Savior who gives suffering meaning, whose presence is true love in a fickle world. I'm reclaiming the desert space in my life for God to make me more like Jesus.
Read MoreThere was a season in home renovations where carpeting everything seemed like a good idea. I had that same idea in my life. It's called a coverup. And it makes perfect sense. Get something that looks better or at least is more practical and just stick it on top. Leave the original beauty (that requires a bit of work) covered...
Read MoreTo say this has been a transition season in my life would be an understatement. Things are changing for me. Internally and externally. What a beautiful beholding when your internal and external worlds change together. There are endless possibilities of kingdom expansion and a beautiful wild wilderness of wonder ahead for all of us. And that itself is breathtaking.
Read MoreI’ve been humbled a lot lately. No doubt it’s a helpful remedy for my often prideful sense of self sufficiency. I suffer from an ‘I’ve got this’ spirit or ‘I can fix that’ one. Different sides of the same coin. Both are rooted in thinking I’m better than I am.
Read MoreI’m pregnant with hope right now. Which. Is. Weird. Because, well, things aren’t so good on a global scale. On the way to a conference recently, I had an especially frank conversation with my Uber driver. She’s not so hopeful. She recounted the horror of the shooting in Los Vegas and the hopelessness she felt about the American political system and the results of global warming on the world and lamented the fact that she chose to bring children into this god-forsaken place. And all the time she was sharing, I was trying to listen to her pain, but what I was really feeling was hope. Which. Is. Weird. Why am I feeling hope at a time that seems so perilous and hopeless? And that’s when it hits me.
Read MorePurity of heart is to will one thing. - Kierkegaard
Many of us believe that God should be leading our lives. But most of us, in moments of honesty, will admit He rarely is actually leading...
Read MoreLots of us go through these things – transitions. I’ve spent a whole life moving from place to place and loving it, well, mostly. The thing about transitions is that they wreak havoc on your everyday. Your rhythm gets thrown off, your relationships get stretched and curtailed and panicked, your life gets slowed and sped up at the same time in different ways. It’s a bit of a chaos that adds to what is already often a messy life.
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