Gentle Reader, please share this with a friend that this could speak to. This is for the brother or sister whose gotten bad news about their career, health, or a family matter. You feel stuck at a dead end, watching dreams crumble in the midst of the daily grind. Maybe pain and fear binds you, keeps you stuck in less than all you could be. Maybe you’ve pushed ahead in your goals as far as physical limits will allow. Maybe it’s not simply the voice of our own emotions screaming “you’ll never win.” Maybe a human authority is telling you that the odds areRead More →

Planning gets a bad wrap in some corners of Christendom, with some inferring it’s ungodly and antithetical to having the peace of God and following the Way. This can be true, if our plans are fleshy, rigid rules. Our plans do need to be of God, faith-filled, spirit-filled, prayed-over, etc. But God is not a God of chaos but a God of order. The Bible contains many plans and scheduled events, such as the Jewish feast days that are optional for us to keep. Now, God may lead us down roads that don’t make logical sense from our vantage point, and I have NEVER knownRead More →

photo credit: Riccardo Palazzani – Italy Presepe 2013 via photopin (license) A popular meme at Christmas states “One Unplanned Pregnancy Saved us All.” The intended point is true enough, however let’s make that lovely point in a theologically accurate way. To start with, due to what people usually mean by “unplanned pregnancy,” calling Christ the product of one implies Mary had either been raped or had slept with Joseph, accidentally got pregnant, and lied about Christ being God’s child and herself being still a virgin. To fix the issue, I propose a slight rephrasing, the title of this post, “One Inconvenient Pregnancy Saved us All.”Read More →

If you’re looking for Esther and having a hard time of finding it, don’t feel so bad. It’s all of 4 chapters. Find Psalms and go left two books. The book of Esther is read in Jewish homes at Purim, which celebrates the survival of the events in Esther. Now, to do this properly, you need to remember that you should hiss whenever the name of the bad guy comes up (Haman. Hissss)1. Okay. Now that you’re prepared, let’s dive in. There was much argument about whether the book of Esther should be included in the canon. There’s no mention of God anywhere in theRead More →

By Adam Graham Note from Andrea: This article begins a two-part series on prayer by a special guest blogger, my sweet, thoughtful husband. The second part will post next Thursday. The Kendrick Brothers’ latest film, War Room, finished second at last weekend’s box office. The film focuses on the power of prayer. For many, that’s a problem. Some have accused the film of preaching a prosperity gospel that says all you have to do is pray in faith and your family’s problems will all go away. I see the film as a mostly positive illustration of the power of prayer, but I also see howRead More →