Category: Practical Theology
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Power(less) Worship
Read more: Power(less) WorshipThe rain pelted the hoods of our jackets as we rushed under the shelter of the awning, standing alongside the others waiting to enter the sanctuary. We stepped through the doors and headed towards our normal pew section (we don’t want to sit in the same pew each week, but being people of habit, we…
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Thumb War
Read more: Thumb War‘Tis the season for self-control. The beginning of Lent always seems to inspire a flurry of resolutions and prohibitions, sometimes the same ones we made at the outset of the year then promptly forgot to keep. As we begin this season of intentional identification with Christ’s wilderness experience and self-denial, my husband and I are…
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Concerted Christ Concentration
Read more: Concerted Christ ConcentrationStars are pretty cool. If you have ever laid out under a dark night sky to see the vibrant tapestry of the galaxy above you, you might understand how it could become someone’s captivation, one’s ambition. Such was the case for Percival Lowell. You may have heard of him. He was born into a wealthy…
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Love Beyond Language
Read more: Love Beyond LanguageLittle children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.-1 John 3:18 She is new. None of us have seen her before. A woman with a modest hijab walks into our English class for the very first time. In many ways she is out of place. She is the…
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A Living Text?
Read more: A Living Text?What does it mean that the “word of God is living?” That’s a big question, but I will only focus on one part. I think that it is of fundamental importance to recognize that, in every day speech, there are two very different sorts of existence that we describe as “alive.” Before we apply the…
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If God, Then…
Read more: If God, Then…The other day, I was listening to Larry Mantle’s show AirTalk on my local public radio station. His guests for one of the segments that day were Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, and William Lane Craig, philosophy professor at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. Their discussion was based on the recent opinion piece…
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Watering My Own Grass (and no, this is not a reference to weed)
Read more: Watering My Own Grass (and no, this is not a reference to weed)“The grass is always greener on the other side, so water your own damn lawn!” my friend told me the other day (in the most loving way, of course). As I think about this piece of wisdom and trying to find contentment in my own life, I’m grateful for the reminder to cultivate what I…
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To My Church, On The Eve Of a Decision
Read more: To My Church, On The Eve Of a DecisionDuring the summer of 1957, a mixed race family immigrated from Holland into the small town of Terra Ceia, North Carolina. The father was Dutch, the mother Indonesian. As they attempted to send their two children to the local Reformed Church school, they were met at the door by local segregationist leaders who considered the…
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Me, Myself, and I
Read more: Me, Myself, and II’m fortunate enough to be doing my graduate work at a small, liberal arts college in Southern California, where, in the middle of January, I get to walk to and from class in temperatures ranging from sixty-five to eighty degrees. In all honesty, if you’re running late or forget a book, this walk can seem…
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An Invitation to Excite Your Biblical Imagination
Read more: An Invitation to Excite Your Biblical ImaginationYour hand th-waps your night stand, grasping for your mobile device to swipe and to silence the iPhone marimba alarm tone. Once the disturbance to your sleep is silenced, you pause, process a death and slow breath, and liberate yourself from the tomb of your bedsheets. Perhaps you slip into your slippers. Or your robe….