rebelling against low expectations
If you have been a Christian for a long time, I’m sure you have heard the Christmas Story a dozen times. We hear it so much that we’ve become blind to the goodness of it. We forget to take in what it really means. The Christmas story about God becoming man to build His kingdom here on Earth is very intriguing, but I think we miss the reason Christmas is such a sweet time. God was unable to be...
“You need to celebrate!” my mentor told me. I’d just told her something I’d been praying for and working toward for months had happened. I laughed, feeling like a hypocrite. I’d just told my mentee that morning to celebrate what God was doing in her life. In our culture, we don’t celebrate a whole lot. Yet celebration is a spiritual discipline. The Israelites, following God’s law, made...
I wish people thought about death more. I think it would change the world. Hang on, stick with me. It’s just that this weekend, I witnessed a car accident. I was almost in a car accident. I also grieved the death of a family friend in a skiing accident. And I experienced the fragility of the human body, dealing with unusual brain swelling and lung issues. I’m twenty – we aren’t supposed to...
In the midst of my health struggles, it took a movie quote to shake me from my despair and remind me of the core of Christian hope. It came from the movie Return of the King. Faramir is comforting Éowyn, who can only see death and despair in both her own future and the future of the world. The scene goes like this: Éowyn: The city has fallen silent. There is no warmth left in the sun. It grows so...
I dragged myself out of bed and groggily got ready for the day. I serve in a kid’s ministry called JumpStart that does church services in lower-income neighborhoods every Saturday. This was our first day of the fall semester, and I was leading games. I admit – I was not in a high-energy, bubbly mood. I was still half asleep, and not particularly happy. But it was hard to stay grumpy when I...
rebelling against low expectations
