Category: Growth
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How Long Must We Wait?
Sometimes life can feel very much like this picture. We carry a burden, and slowly the long years take their toll on us, until the weight seems normal. This is how we were meant to live. And it is. For a time. One day the burden will be lifted. One day we will walk free…
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Easy Street
I’ve always loved this painting. I found it in a magazine about Azerbaijan 20 years ago when I was teaching high school art, and it immediately captured my imagination. It was painted in 1957 and depicts oil workers at the end of what must have been a hard day’s work on the world’s first offshore…
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Masks
Across cultures and ages, masks have been used for a multitude of reasons, but their ubiquity seems to indicate that we create them because of something common to the human condition. It seems that all of us can identify with the desire to put someone else’s face over our own, for any number of reasons.…
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Just Right
See that you do all I command you; do not add to it or take away from it. Deuteronomy 12:32 (NIV) In my walk with God, I find this to be one of the most difficult commands to obey in all of the Bible. We are given similar commands in Proverbs and Revelation. While each…
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A response to John Ortberg
The following is an excerpt from Soul Keeping by John Ortberg on the dark night of the soul: It is important to understand that the dark night, as John writes about it, is not the soul’s fault. Of course, it’s possible for me to grow cold toward God because I cling to sin, or prefer…
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The Broken Heart of God
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that, as a Christian, all of us have had to come to terms with how we’ve fallen short of the glory of God. It’s kind of required. We have to, as redeemed children of God, accept our need for forgiveness before we can be forgiven. I think,…
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Start on Empty
The more I study the Bible, the more convinced I am that the culture we live in today is completely antithetical to the gospel of Christ. I would think that most of us sharing this perspective consider this an active plot of the enemy to disrupt the plans of God. Perhaps. But I wonder sometimes…
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Eyes to See
I grew up in East Texas, and I vividly remember seeing unfiltered, unabashed racism in another, and wondering how someone could come to such misguided conclusions about other people based solely on the color of their skin. I felt sorry for them. I went off to college, and got married, and one day, while having…
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I want my ambiguity
If you’ve never seen this illusion, it can really mess with your mind. Are they circles or squares? In my opinion, this is one of the best analogies for Christian theology that I’ve ever seen. In many ways life seems like a paradox. Two statements that can’t both be true, but are. It can’t be…
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I want my weakness
White supremacists have dominated the news cycles lately. I’ve never really understood the concept of racial superiority. When I read about how African slaves were treated in colonial America, how they were considered less than human, it makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder what series of events caused an entire culture to consider…
Adam desmond 