Category: thoughts
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A word for my artist friends.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain. John Adams I…
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What is church?
My boys were in the car with my sister when it happened. They drove past our church building – a huge, gorgeous brick building located conspicuously downtown, right on the main drag. “There’s your church!” my sister said, innocuously. “Well, that’s the place we go to church,” my 4-year-old corrected her, just as innocuously. “Our church…
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No more inspiring devotions, please.
I just got a pop-up window that said, “Click here to get inspiring email devotions in your inbox.” Call me a cynic, but my first thought was, ‘That’s the last thing I need – to be inspired. I need far more help than fuzzy, feel-good devotionals.’ I looked up the definition of inspire: to fill…
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bringing heaven / bringing hell
I hear a lot of conversation surrounding: How do we, as Jesus-followers, bring heaven to earth? It is, indeed, the beautiful beginning place of the Lord’s prayer: “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done — on earth as it is in heaven.” This conversation is important, wonderful, great. But, I think we could get a…
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“I’ll just break it again.” A story about a ceramic travel coffee mug.
Last year, I experienced a great deal of newfound freedom in one particular area of my life. During that time, I happened upon a ceramic travel coffee mug that, to me, represented visually that area of freedom. So, I bought it as a celebration of what God had done. Three weeks later, the ceramic travel…
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New Parents! Diapers or Deadlines: 7 Things to Consider about Staying Home vs Going Back to Work after Baby
The decision of whether or not to go back to work outside the home after maternity/paternity leave is nothing short of a difficult one for many. There are so many factors to consider: Who will go, mum or dad? If both, how many hours should one go back to work? Will going back to work affect the…
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When Suffering Leaves Me Too Angry to Pray ‘Right,’ ‘Nice’ Prayers
As I’ve already mentioned on social media, I’m reading Tim Keller’s Walking with God through Pain & Suffering. Perhaps the main three things it has done in my life thus far: altered my faulty, very Western-culture-influenced frame of reference about pain and suffering validated, comforted, and tenderly shepherded (“pastored”) my own experiences of darkness and suffering tenderized…
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When it comes to Christian sports karma, I say we leave God out of it!
First: I am a sports fan. In fact, I’d place myself somewhere on the scale between “devoted” and “avid.” I am from the Northwest, so a lot of my regional teams have had a tradition of losing for most of my short lifetime. (Seahawks football; Mariners baseball; Washington State University everything, anyone?) One cannot be…
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Rest for “Life’s Crushing Load”
At church yesterday we sang “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” to the quirky-beautiful plucking of Lyndi’s ukelele. We sang all the verses. The third resonated somewhere deep in my heart: “And ye, beneath life’s crushing load, Whose forms are bending low, Who toil along the climbing…
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How many kids should we have?
The whole issue of choosing whether or not to have children, when to have children, and how many children to have is extremely multi-faceted. It is an issue that has preoccupied recent generations far more than the generations preceding us simply due to the sponsorship of its patron saint: birth controls.* I know you know…