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How Our Relational Style Affects Our Faith
I find that if I have a misconception of love and thus of God, that is, one that does not align fully with scripture, I need look no further than my relational style. Because we are in a genuine relationship with the Lord, we will often have similar hang-ups to those we have in our human relationships. All of us have a relational style, learned from parents and friends that we bring to our marriages and parenting. It should then come as no surprise that those relational styles affect our connection with God. A misconception of love, too, is common. As a naïve seventeen-year-old, I took my first husband’s overwhelming…
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Every Poem Wants to Be Jesus: Why Christians Need Art
How mysterious is the incarnation of God in man in the person of Jesus Christ! God, who is spirit, makes Himself known in the body of Jesus. Making the word flesh is, of course, the aim of every poet. The goal of art is to turn what is spirit into a poem, a painting, a dance, or a song. It is the same impulse, to turn what is ineffable into something concrete. To turn the abstract into something that can be lived within the body. The Greek word, Logos, which means the Word and the Deed, is an attempt to explain the mystery of metaphor and the nature of incarnation.…
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The Road to Jerusalem is in Your Heart
Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion. Psalm 84:5 The heart is often under attack in the church. It seems that one verse in Jeremiah stands for the whole of scripture’s stand on the heart. “Your heart is deceptive and desperately wicked,” preachers tell me, but then I am told to guard my heart, for out of it comes the wellsprings of life, according to Proverbs. Seems contradictory. The New Testament is kinder to the heart, telling me to love others from the heart, to love God with a pure heart, and not to lose heart. And if my heart condemns…
Healing Through Art & Words
