-
My Son is Alive: How God Kept His Promise
I’ll never forget the day my journey towards my son started. I was with my sister-in-law Amy in her depressing little studio apartment, and I had just used her bathroom. When I came out, it suddenly dawned on her that I had seen a pregnancy test box. She confessed her secret to me: she was pregnant. Now, you have to understand something about me. I have never been a baby person. I love kids, but babies used to bore me. I think it’s because they can’t talk or walk or really do anything, so I just have a hard time connecting with them. I’ve never had baby fever. I smile…
-
How to Tell if You Are in a Cocoon Phase
We Christians often like to talk about transformation, but the cocoon phase of that process is less glamorous. The Bible spills over with stories about men and women in cocoons of one sort or another. The message each time is the same. Some metamorphosis happens fast, but more often than not, change takes some time. The growth required to move from caterpillar to butterfly fascinates me. I remember as a child finding an exotic caterpillar in my backyard. I put it in a small plastic container with food and a stick. Soon a greyish sack, smooth on one side and puckered on the other, hung from the twig I had…
-
Finding Your Self and Why it Matters
In the religious stream in which I grew up, finding your self was synonymous with narcissism. Whenever so and so mentioned that their friend or relative was embarking on a quest to find themselves, the adults would snicker. Then they would throw out the Bible verse that says, he who would find himself must first lose himself. That is not quite the way the original reads. I grew up thinking that having a self must be a bad thing indeed. Jesus would not approve. Now my theology has changed rather drastically. That I even have a self is a miracle. In fact, I am pretty sure that it is the greatest…