“Shalom!” or “Shalom aleichem!” That was the greeting she expected from the strange man angel. “Peace be unto you.” It was the greeting used by Jesus, and is the enduring salutation of the Abrahamic peoples to this day.

The builder betrothed to Mary emerges and recedes from the pages like a tumbling shell. A beauty briefly glimpsed and then whisked away by tides operating at the Father’s unknown rhythms.

Barren. It was a heavy weight for Elizabeth, for Sarah, for Rachel, for Samson’s unnamed mother. It continues to be a heavy weight for so many, a death sentence. Not a bodily death, but a social one. What is death if not separation?

Some miracles are revealed in precise moments, and others by increments. The conception of the Messiah was an unexpected moment in time and space, an act of revelation at the hand of the Father in a virgin womb. The coming of the long-awaited Messiah would take time. It was a steady march through forty-two generations…

We live in a darkened land with desperate valleys. Hope is not the sentiment prevailed upon us by the prince of this world. Despair on the other hand, is a well-rehearsed, discordant melody. If you are a child of Adam, you are a walker in darkness, a singer of broken songs.

Life is a progression of paradoxes, never wholly one thing or another. Our efforts to give shape to our experiences and intuitions with words fall short, and the inexpressible layers of our lives lie buried beneath mounting platitudes…

If Satan is doing anything of importance on my street, it would most likely be making me care too much about those yard signs, turning my heart off toward my lost neighbors, whooshing out “this little light of mine,”…

…postmodernism ushered in an age of idolatry unlike anything the world has ever witnessed; an idolatry not composed of wood and stone images, but mirrors. “To thine own self be true,” sprouted not a flourishing garden, but a weedpatch of rudderless self worship; a world in which we ourselves are gods, yet with no wisdom, holiness, or providence.

To honor those who have both made and kept America free with their very lives is a good thing. But it shouldn’t end there. The question ever before us amidst such remembrances is: To what end?

As Summer 2023 rolls in, many churches, youth groups, and teams will traverse the globe to participate in short-term mission trips. Let me state at the outset that these trips are vital to the life of Great Commission obedient churches and believers, as well as the partners they serve internationally.

We know that we ought to be obedient to the Great Commission, but it can feel like a one-way, guilt-laden pipeline, straining the limits of our church’s giving. While we may identify it as the right thing to do, it can be hard to reconcile with being the most prudent thing to do, especially when giving doesn’t meet budget projections…

While nearly every church would now define themselves as “On Mission,” what exactly that mission is, either lacks clarity or leaves much to be desired.

These perspectives most often arise indirectly, and are the slight objections that linger just beyond the spoken heart. The things many faithful churches and church members secretly believe, but wouldn’t speak aloud either so as not to hurt anyone’s feelings, or risk sounding unspiritual. They’re the elephants in the sanctuary. Friendly elephants perhaps, but elephants nonetheless.

In the wake of the “Attractional Church Model” peddled to us for the better part of two decades spanning the late 20th and early 21st century by well-intentioned church growth enthusiasts, many churches now find themselves caught between two worlds.

We are living in a time of great potential for developing missionaries with minimal interruptions to their ministries if we can approach the obstacles to training with some humility and creativity.

The contrasts of flesh and spirit are perhaps no more laid bare, than at Christmas, when the thrill of hope crashes headlong into the desperation of daily trials. Transcendent and entangled, helpless and hopeful, fragile yet fortified.

The perceived delay in the unfurling of God’s plan allows for seasons of much distraction. We find ourselves frayed and fragile, hanging on to our deferred hopes by some tenacity of will.

What does it say about us, that the most memorable of stories is one centered on Joseph and Mary fraught with anxiety?

We are crooked, and we grow in crooked ways. A training in godliness will help straighten the curves, but the curves are evident even with all of the energy exerted in the process.