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Learn to Laugh with Jesus: Experience Joy with Him
Sometimes I laugh at the Bible and its crazy stories. Learning to read and digest the Bible on one’s own is sometimes one of the most difficult tasks a Christian takes on. The Bible is filled with extreme stories and occasionally we read a story that makes little or no sense to us. I was reading Joshua and came upon such a story. Before Joshua would allow the Israelites to go into the Promised Land and begin the process of claiming it for their own, he required each of the men to circumcise themselves. I really couldn’t help but laugh at this and shudder at the same time. They had…
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My First Adventure in Prayer
Nearly twenty years ago, I taught at a very rural high school where I had the leisure of an entire school year to explore my profound inability to discipline tenth graders. The school was so rural that when students heard my California accent, their first question was to ask me if I was from “off”. This referred to anyone that came from outside their county of around six thousand citizens. “Yes,” I assured them, “I am from way “off”. And it was here, at this little country high school that I learned that God answers prayer in crazy ways sometimes. I had a co-worker I will call “Jane” who was…
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Why Offering Forgiveness is Terrifying
Grudges are somewhat satisfying. They are weapons we keep to remind us of our own superiority. We pull them up at convenient moments and use them like baseball bats to remind others and ourselves that while we may have done a, b, or c, at least we haven’t done x, y, or z. A good grudge can keep a game of one-upmanship going for years. But for those of us who would like to let bygones be bygones, or whose conscience reminds us that grudges are not a part of an abundant life in Christ, the nitty gritty of forgiveness is fraught with fears that we are not quite sure…
Healing Through Art & Words
