Author: Jocelyn
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You choose your leaders.
These days, I hear a lot of terrified people speaking in rather alarmist tones about how worried they are about who will be elected our next president. On both sides of the political spectrum. Recently, I heard a pastor on the radio urging people to pray for our nation right now “as we choose our…
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Is Your God Too Fragile?
Mine was. (He still is sometimes, unfortunately.) He was always teetering on the edge of psychological imbalance, fully out of control of his emotions. If I did something wrong – either willfully or unintentionally – I risked his fury. If I didn’t believe the exact right thing about a particular, obscure Christian doctrine, I risked…
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Apical Dominance. Spiritual Formation series, part 6.
For one year during my college years, I tutored a Korean-American high school sophomore named Stephen. Our primary focus was his Biology class (my degree was in the sciences). I mostly remember that he was a really great kid and that we laughed a lot. If you’ve ever taught anyone anything before, you won’t be…
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He Showed Me Love
Tim Keller says that for you to know that you are loved, it is not enough just to be told. In order for you to really know and believe way deep down in your heart that you are loved, you must be shown. (Incidentally, every time I think about this idea, it blows off the…
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I went to church 12 times this week.
But I didn’t go to a worship service for an hour on Sunday morning. Does it still ‘count’? DISCLAIMER: I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m at all bragging about my spirituality-infused life. I’m not. And I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m saying that hour long worship services on Sunday mornings are worthless. I’m…
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To sit with her in her pain.
Several days ago I received a sublime gift: to sit with a dear friend in her pain. It may not sound like a gift to you, but hear me out. My friend’s life has been upended in so many ways; what were solid foundations of her spiritual, emotional, and physical life have been torn out…
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Where has judgment gotten us?
I am a very judgmental person. Of myself and of others. My husband says we all are. He’s really different than me, and he’s really wonderful, so I believe him. Anyway, questions about judgment have been cropping up in my default thought-bank lately. You know, the bank to which your thoughts turn when you’re not…
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Love is the prize.
I was driving in my car listening to the radio yesterday and that old-ish Avicii song “Wake Me Up” came on… you know: So wake me up when it’s all over When I’m wiser and I’m older All this time I was finding myself And I didn’t know I was lost Anyway,…
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Repenting of Religion (by Gregory A. Boyd)
a premature book recommendation I usually don’t write [at least directly] about the books I’m reading until my end-of-year book reviews posts. But I’m reading a book right now that is, in the words of my dear friend Samantha, ‘tearing me up.’ Not tearing like so many salty water droplets from my eyes; tearing like…
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An excerpt: Gospel of Mark devotional study
Just in case you didn’t know already, I’m studying and writing out of the Jesus biography Gospel of Mark right now. It’s become quite the project; a much bigger project than what I’d anticipated when I ‘signed on’ to my husband’s idea-in-passing for me to write a weekly devotional alongside the study of Mark at…