The Christian Century

You don't want a nice church, or so I am led to understand. You want a church that zealously defends the Truth.

Silly me, I thought I had a lot to show our newest first graders.

“I know you pray a lot, but what actually gets done?”

I like homiletical challenges. I enjoy preaching on Trinity Sunday and when Jesus tells us that anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. I like tackling the tough doctrines and demands of the gospel. But Sunday's Gospel lesson, the parable of the dishonest manager? That takes difficult to another order of magnitude.

One of the key stops on the Romans Road to salvation is Romans 3:23. Stop me if you’ve heard it from an evangelical friend of yours—“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Or, perhaps you haven’t walked that path before; maybe you’ve spent your whole life in mainline Protestantism. If that’s the case, then you are likely familiar with the idea of corporate confession. 

Schlaflosigkeit. The German word for insomnia. Our family recently visited dear friends in Germany and my body performed its usual stubborn revolt against the rude imposition of foreign time zones and unfamiliar schedules.

I spent eight years wondering what it would feel like to be a mother of a particular child. I thought of it every time I picked up drugs at the pharmacy for one of our in vitro fertilization procedures.

“Choose life,” the prophet says. Choose life over the deadly ways of lesser gods. Choose life over all that shines, sparkles, and glitters. Choose life over what you possess and over what possesses you. It sounds so easy and desirable. Sure, until Jesus comes along and names the cost right out loud. If we truly choose life, we have to let go of everything. Years ago I had a therapist who told me that the choice to live or die was mine.

Earlier this month, I drove out to the mountains to pick up my son from a 12-day wilderness/adventure/ education camp. As the sun set over a gorgeous summer evening in the Rockies, we were treated to a closing program that gave us a glimpse into what the 12 days had looked like.

The morning was hot, the thick wet suffusing heat of a late southern summer, and I was walking.