The good news doesn’t start with people as sinners with whom God is angry. It starts in the beginning. And if we miss this, the good news will fail to be good news. In the beginning, God made man and woman to be the Imago Dei—the image of God on the earth. By God’s design, all of creation recognized them with joyful awe. They were the ones the Creator had joyfully made like Himself. Or as John...
Shhhhhhhame
Shame hurts. And when you’ve done something wrong, that’s a good thing. Like all pain, it’s meant to tell you something’s amiss and needs attention. When a splinter enters a person’s hand, pain sensors alert the person that there’s a problem by making the hand hurt. When the splinter’s removed, the wound is cleaned, and the cells regenerate, the hand no longer hurts. Likewise, when shame is...
Sex Isn’t a Thing
It's so much greater. Changing our thinking about sex could change our world.
Rats and Beauty
We all have places in our lives we know aren’t beautiful, including at least a few places that are just down right ugly. When we come face to face with one of these parts, we have a choice in how we respond. Many respond by following a logic like this: If you see a rat in your house, you get out a broom and take a whack at it. (Or something, anything, to get rid of it, and fast.) So you see...
Bargain Hunting
If you could be anywhere in the world to see something that reminded you of God’s beauty, where would that be? The Atlantic at sunrise? The Rocky Mountains when the Aspens are golden? The edge of the Grand Canyon? The Reflection Pond in Denali National Park? Or how about the grocery store line where the woman in front of you is fumbling through an overstuffed purse to find her 50¢ off...
Humdrum Love
I love new music. When I’m introduced to a new song I like, it finds its way onto every playlist I make for the next several months. Then at some point, I press play and find these young, spry songs have become worn, predictable ones. This can happen in the realm of words, too. Words that once stirred or inspired us can, over time, become tired and formulaic. We end up skipping over them without...
