His Vigorous Heart

Hey friends! I have been hesitant to share an update on my life, because it involves a job, and a job ( for me ) has always involved a mixture of pride and identity and an unhealthy fixation on money, and announcing that on social media just adds a dangerous new spin on all of those things--all wrapped up in the fact that it’s a ministry position and I want to be sure I’m doing it for the right reasons and not just so that I “look cool” or whatever. That said, I also think it’s a bit disingenuous to not share about what God has been doing in my life and in the lives of others through me. In light of all the things I’ve been learning about grace the last few years, it seems a bit weird not to share what is perhaps the biggest example of grace that I’ve experienced in this whole process. And it begins with a story. One Friday morning in August I was sitting at my office desk stuffing envelopes and researching cheap plane tickets in my downtime. I had just come to terms with the ...

It's a twisted view of forgiveness if we think it has to involve punishment.  Actions have consequences, sure. Reparations must be made.  But our imagination is weak if we can think of no restorative forms of justice. Our love is weak if it must rely on vengeance to make things right. Our forgiveness is weak if it only takes place in witnessing the destruction of others.  I wonder what our views about love and forgiveness teach us about how we think about God? I'm watching The Handmaid's Tale right now and I love it. It's brutal and dark and in many ways obviously unrealistic. But as a cautionary parable or metaphor, it shows us how easily religious doctrine can be distorted and misinterpreted in terrible ways that cause great pain to a lot of people. And if such errors can happen in this world, who's to say that we can't make similar mistakes in ours?  Just like Darren Aronofsky's controversial  Noah film, I'm fascinated by the ...

Recently, Nadia Bolz Weber shared an article written by my friend Connor about deconstruction. And today I came across a comment about deconstruction while I was stalking a Facebook post by a friend of a friend (as one does on the internet....no? Am I the only one? Alright.) 10 years ago--even 5 years ago--deconstruction meant something different than it does now. Back then (when cell phones still had hinges) it seemed like a perfect phrase for what I was going through. Like everyone, I had a boat , a house of cards, that I grew up within and was very familiar with. Not a "bubble", per se, but an entire personal framework and foundation for viewing and understanding the world around me. You could almost think of it as my identity; it was the way I interacted with the world, the container in which I held my conception of reality. It was comfortable in my little house, and I had a place to store every single thought or idea. But then slowly I started encountering things th...