Category: Hope
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Pro-Wrestling Goes to Church Part I
I’ve wanted to write something like this for a decade and maybe I have. It’s hard to keep track of 323 blog entries. But I’ve wanted to write about how the world of professional wrestling internal and external operate as an at times ideal version on the Church. Now I know what you might be…
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The Sun, The Sea, And Me
I have not written in a long time. Maybe 2 1/2 months to some is not a long time. Maybe it’s not a long time and just feels like a long time. I guess it depends on what you’re waiting for or enduring. I think vitamin D and water are good for you. I think…
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My Father, the Hero
About 6 years ago, at Pennington Assembly of God, members of the staff recorded videos of our fathers listening to us answering questions about what it was like to be raised and loved by our dads and the instances in which we as sons did things that were unbecoming of the fearfully wonderful men we…
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A Few Tender Words to You, as if You were Me
Hello friend, I don’t know what you might be carrying lately. I also don’t know if what you are carrying is much heavier or signicantly lighter than you are imagining. I don’t know even know if your indecision is the product of you not actually knowing or if you feel so trapped where you are…
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Sing with what we Got: Habakkuk 3
What we have in Christ is so much more than what we’ve lost. This might be hard to believe, harder to feel, and sometimes we are not at all able to see it, perhaps even moreso now in this season. Which means now more than ever remembering and hearing what God has done is so…
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06 Brother
when Absalom died, did his brothers rejoice while their father wept? brother, the cement you set around your heart has not kept you warm brother, your steps when static are scary; when unstable, exhausting all this restlessness and discontent is making you invisible let there be nothing left for you to conquer brother, concubines don’t…
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When the Game Slows Down
My orientation into chaplaincy has begun. Who knew orientation could feel so disorienting? While inundated with information, it is amazing how many golden nuggets of truth and wisdom I have received in a weeks time. One statement I am fixated on, even though I have not yet visited a single patient is this: “The game…
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Mommy and Dad (as you are in my phone) I Hope I get this Right
I’m so naïve. It didn’t take long. I wept for the first time today, and it wasn’t because I visited a church during an emotional service where they were saying goodbye to some people they really love, to send them to Burundi perhaps indefinitely. I didn’t weep because I was confronted with my own darkness,…
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What do I do with these blank pages?
In 2010 I wrote to be funny, more specifically I wrote comedic fiction for a class to counterbalance writing my thesis on Islamic extremism in Southern Russia and what exactly that looked like. But what I was most proud of is a story called the Cheesebringer, which was a dumb coming of age story about…
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A Time Before Certainty
Matthew 13:1-32 I worked on an organic farm for 4 seasons. It’s interesting how many factors go into having a fruitful crop: the seed, the soil, the sun, the water, the bugs. Some of these can be controlled. We can add water, we can spray pesticides (technically not in organic farming). Much of farming maintains…
The Reconstructed 