The Monk’s 12 Step Program
Humility is one of those very difficult virtues to develop. What do we do to become more humble? What actions can we take? We hear more about being humbled–or even humiliated–than about humbling ourselves. My good friend Megan is quite…
Faith and Healing
In Acts 3, Peter and John heal a crippled beggar and later attribute the healing to faith in Jesus’ name. This raises all sorts of questions, especially in our culture this one: How can I get the same thing? How…
4th of July
My good friend Ben Shive wrote a song that appeared on his first album, The Ill-Tempered Klavier, called “4th of July.” It is a beautiful song, which you can listen to on his My Space page. You can purchase the…
A Quote: End and Goal
“Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn’t reached its goal. A parable.” -Friedrich Nietzsche
Pattern of Life
Most of the time that I have heard talk of “being Christlike,” it has usually been in reference to polite behavior. As if the gospel message were basically, “God is redeeming all of creation and has filled us with the…
Conversation on Love
Me: “I love you.” Wife: “That’s nice.” [laughter] Me: “What on earth!? ‘That’s nice’!?” Wife: “Well, what do you want me to say?” Me: “I think it’s normal to say ‘I love you, too.’” Wife: “I have to say that…
Unworthy of a Family
A friend recently told me of a family in Alabama who are trying to adopt a boy with Down syndrome from Russia, but have been so far unsuccessful. It seems they are in a legal battle with the Russian government…
A Wedding Sermon
I was privileged to perform my first wedding ceremony for my very dear friends Patrick and Luz in Los Angeles this past weekend. Below is, for the most part, the homily that I gave. A note about posting a bunch…
Ironic Church Planting
When I was in seminary, the head of the youth and family ministry department spoke to the new class of students and said that we shouldn’t go into youth ministry unless we were in it for the long haul and…
Commenting Curtailed
Just a couple quick program notes: 1. I have not forgotten about this blog. New posts coming soon! 2. For some reason I just got hit with a huge amount of spam, so I have changed the settings for comments….
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