Category: Christian Life
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Why Peace Feels Impossible
We live in a culture that honors fighting, respects confrontation, and encourages arguing. It seems like everyone is always mad! Peace seems impossible because it is not something that comes naturally to us. And that is exactly the problem Paul is naming in Romans 12. Beginning at verse 14, he gives a list of hard…
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Full Books, Heavy Hearts
When we collect our hurts like emotional trading stamps. If you grew up in this part of Texas before 1980, you probably remember S&H Green Stamps. Every time you checked out at the grocery store the cashier would count out a strip of little green stamps based on how much you spent. You’d take them…
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When You Get Mad at Your Pastor
It happens more often than we like to admit. The pastor says something in a sermon that rubs us the wrong way, makes a decision we don’t like, or makes a comment in casual conversation that comes across as less than pastoral. How do we respond? Too often, people get angry and react in unhelpful…
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Do Not Journey Alone
The question worth wrestling with is not whether you need someone like this in your life. You do.
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It’s Just a Tie Unless You Know the Story
I wore a tie to church recently, which is rare for me. I usually save a tie for the Sundays when we share the Lord’s Supper. This one was white, and to anyone looking at it from the pew, it was nothing special. But I knew the story behind it, and that changed everything. When…
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A Light for the Ones We Can’t See Yet
A lighthouse is a strange thing when you stop to think about it. Nobody builds one for the people who are already safe in the harbor. The folks standing on the shore with their feet on dry ground do not need a beam of light sweeping across the water. The lighthouse exists for the boat…
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Room for One More
There is an empty chair sitting on our platform at church right now. The first Sunday people saw it, I’m sure they were wondering why a single chair was parked up front with nobody in it. It was there to remind us about the building we are planning. We do need the reminder, because we…
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Because He is Faithful
There is a certain kind of house that everyone ought to get to grow up near. Maybe it was a grandmother’s place, or an aunt’s, or the home of a neighbor down the road. What made it that kind of house was something simple. The door was always open to you. You did not have…
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What the Winter Field Knows
Toward the end of winter, if you stand at the edge of a field and look across it, everything tells you the same thing. The ground is gray and brown. Nothing is moving. Nothing is growing. If you trusted your eyes alone, you would conclude that the field is finished, that whatever life it once…