If you’ve seen an alleyway lined with blankets and cardboard boxes or an underpass flickering with the light of empty oil drum fires, you’ve had a glimpse of a vagabond fellowship. It’s a place where the beat down and broken find an accepting community, but one where they remain broken.
Do you ever feel uncomfortable being a Christian where you live, work, or play? I’ve just finished Ian Morgan Cron’s book, Chasing Francis.* In it, the main character observes: “Once you’ve been outed as a conservative Christian, [people] assume you’re a right-wing, self-satisfied fundamentalist with all the mental acuity of a houseplant.” I’ve felt this way sometimes. It tempts me to hide. 1...
It's so much greater. Changing our thinking about sex could change our world.
If this sounds disappointing or discouraging to you, pause for a moment and consider this question: Do you think God wants you to use him? The desire to be used by God sounds good on the surface. Noble even. But it’s not what He’s after. This is good news because at our core, we don’t want to be used. We want to be loved. We want our work to matter to someone because we matter to them. We want...
All I did was ask for half caff. Our waitress glanced toward the kitchen miserably, like I’d just added an hour’s worth of work to her day. I looked around at the spattering of others in the restaurant (hardly a rush); then, when she walked away, I leaned across the table and whispered to my friend, “She’s a grump.” Maybe. But this was also an opportunity for me, and I missed it. Two days later I...
We live in a world that pursues pleasure endlessly. But pleasure is elusive. How can you experience more?
