Christians have such a weird relationships with hard emotions. I think it is because we often are led to believe that expressing sadness, disappointment, anger, or fear means that we don't trust God, we don't believe God is good, that we are somehow failing God by being less than perfectly cheerful every day of our […]
It is far too easy, when life is dark, to turn to facts and non-facts, arguments and counterarguments, all the words and torrents of opinion. We look to these things to help us make sense of the nonsensical, the absurd, the impossible to believe. But I find, when life is dark, poetry often helps more […]
A quick disclaimer to start this post: I am a beginner in my effort to understand the Confessing Church in Hitler's Germany. I am simply writing as I am learning. I may occasionally get my facts wrong, or simplify a topic that really shouldn't be simplified. I need to say that aloud. And, at the […]
Well before dawn this morning, a little bird struck up a song outside an open window above our bed. She sang her heart out. Her chorus was complex: chirps and warbles and runs. A veritable symphony of joy, filled with contagious energy and beauty. She sang her heart out. The darkness did not stop her. […]
The despair of holy Saturday. The day it seemed God had failed. As if Jesus was a liar. As if his followers were to be pitied. The earth grieved. The women wept. The Word of God lay silent in a tomb. The light of the world snuffed out by the powerful exhale of evil. It […]
Today is Good Friday, the day we remember Jesus and his crucifixion. Scottish preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne speaks of the darkness of it all: He was without any comforts of God--no feeling that God loved him-- no feeling that God pitied him--no feeling that God supported him. God was his sun before--now that sun became […]
