Today our divided nation will finally share a common thought: “Thank God this election is over.” It has been a particularly nasty battle. And too many of us know the damage caused by breathing in the second-hand vitriol that has filled the air in these recent months. It is time to breathe in the fresh air […]
The Jesus Who Once Threatened Us Beyond Our Endurance Is Still the Same
My first year of college, I shared a room in the dorm known as “The Zoo” on campus with one of my best friends from all of my growing up days, my friend, Glenn. And he had all sorts of things on his side of the room that I didn’t have on mine, and none […]
As Seen Through Our Children’s Eyes
Sometimes the right words show up at the right time. That happened in the days following the Orlando shootings at the Pulse Nightclub on June 12, 2016. A poem by Maggie Smith, written before the rampage at Pulse but published by Waxwing Literary Journal a few days later (Issue IX, Summer 2016) and shared widely in the weeks since, […]
When Our Love Leads Us to Choose Differently
As I wove my way through the glut of shoppers around me, I steered my cart with one hand and glanced at the shopping list open on my phone in the other. One item remained. Strawberries. It was late in the summer of 2013, and I had just returned from a week of building houses […]
We Need Our Neighbors, and They Need Us
Do you know what it means to be weary? You could look it up, and the dictionary would tell you that to be weary is to be physically or emotionally exhausted. But even without the dictionary telling you what weary is, your neighbors will show you what it means to be weary. Weary is feeling […]
Are You Too Weary to Protest?
It was just over a year ago, on the Sunday following the shootings in the Charleston church, when I did something in worship that I naively thought would be a one-time thing. Before standing up for the greeting, I began to sing some words written by Desmond Tutu that John Bell had set to music. As […]