Personal Studies
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The Habit of Forgetting
I’m a forgetful person. Or, rather, I have a great memory that only works in specific contexts. I promised to help you address some postcards while standing in the church lobby the other day? It’s completely out of my head until I set foot back into that same lobby. (Shameless endorsement: I’ve downloaded an app Continue reading
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The Habit of Doing Nothing
The problem with going so long without making any posts is that it’s easy to just keep doing nothing. Every day I went without writing for this blog, the harder it was to jump back in. I’d look at the site stats and think, “Traffic is okay; I can go another day without posting.” And Continue reading
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The Back Burner
A few posts back, a visitor left a comment that I seemed like a committed Christian, and I responded to him that I felt rather uncommitted because of the lack of updates to this site. And now I’ve gone almost two months without a real post. It makes me think of something a friend of mine was Continue reading
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Generalizing
Most people I know would not be happy if they heard something like… Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites. White people think they’re better than everyone else. Women think with their hearts not with their minds. Republicans don’t care about anything but their money. I can almost feel you getting upset from over here. Or is Continue reading
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Celebrating…What Exactly?
The last couple of years, I’ve found myself very pensive about what the holiday season means to me and what it should possibly mean for other members of the Lord’s body. I don’t have to give much evidence that – like many Christian traditions and practices – the Christmas holiday has devolved into a symbol of Western Continue reading
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18,000 Light Years
I once heard an astronomer explain that we can’t help but live in the past – in a very literal sense. Every point of light we see in the sky happened in the past. If we are looking at a star that’s 18,000 light years away, then we are looking at light that began to Continue reading
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Grateful Living
We have much to be thankful for, but being a truly thankful Christian goes beyond words. We may acknowledge our thanks in prayer. We may sing hymns of thanksgiving. We may post online about our thankfulness to God for all of His blessings, but words are empty without actions to back them up. If we Continue reading
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Little Distractions
A couple of months ago, my congregation was studying about what it means to be living sacrifices. The series was called Worship 24 x 7, and I even had the privilege of delivering a lesson in the series about our Christian lives at school. Being a living sacrifice is a large undertaking. Numerous passages in the Old Continue reading
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Knock Knock
I saw this performance the other day: As someone who teaches in a low income, urban setting, I can’t even begin to describe what this poem means to me. As someone who still thinks racism is alive and well, as someone who wants better for the next generation, as someone who sees the struggle Mr. Continue reading
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Never Forgive
We seem to be a species with short memories, but I’ve come to the conclusion that there is one standout exception. We have long memories when it comes to things that hurt us. I may not recall that my wife got me my favorite cupcakes on December 7, 2003, but I’ll sure remember that Preacher Continue reading
Simply Gospel 