Category - Life Issues

Eugene Peterson once told a story of a group of men and women who grew up in, of all places, a warehouse. This was their life context, one without exits. There were, however, windows up above, the panes covered with years of thick dust—so no one ever bothered to look out. After all, people were[…]

For most of my years—both as a pastor and a theology professor—I have been careful to not mix politics with faith. I have kept political voices out of my sermons, in part because my hope is not found in what emanates from Washington. Further, I have found little in common with the Far Right, as[…]

“That must be a Steller’s Jay—black head, deep blue upperparts, and narrow black bars on the wings.” What’s happened to me? This quarantine has forced me to slow down and notice things I have typically been too oblivious to see. Is this happening to you? I find myself grabbing a field guide when something is[…]

Yesterday I sent to my colleagues an article by Beckie Supiano (and wonderfully illustrated by Ron Coddington) entitled, “Why is Zoom So Exhausting?” It seemed an appropriate read, especially after being on Zoom for much of this week. Videoconferencing is one way we are replicating what would have been residential. Residential is beginning to sound[…]

When you are up in the wilderness, it is easy to lose track of time. What day is it? Our current lockdown does not help. Days seem to shade into one another. From an initial read of the morning news, one would not know that today is Friday–Good Friday. The Washington Post, the Stratfor Worldview[…]

All of us find ourselves coping at the moment. We do so in different ways—walking, painting walls, reading books, binging on Foyle’s War for the third time. Part of how I cope is writing, processing. Working on a book I am not sure will be published, but giving eight, ten hours a day to it.[…]

In P.T. Forsyth’s The Soul of Prayer, he writes, “Prayer is where our thought of God passes into action and becomes more certain than thought.”  This is what I find in Jonah’s prayer—his prayer in the belly of the whale, a.k.a. his quarantine. In this period of divinely enforced social distancing, where there was no[…]

There are two things getting me through this extraordinary season. And no, it’s not putting up lights and pretending it is Christmas. The first is relationships. Family. My prayer group on Sunday nights. My band of brothers on Monday nights. We Zoom in and share what we are learning— -focus on what cannot be shaken![…]

There are lots of ways to react to this pandemic. Become obsessed with it, watching the news 24/7 and keeping up with the articles that pop up every few minutes. Or find some form of escape, be it watching Foyle’s War or reruns of the Twilight Zone (especially the apocalyptic episodes).  Prayer may be our[…]