Reinventing the Wheel We keep reinventing the wheel. Some brilliant idea strikes us and we launch out to the local hardware, buy a hammer and chisel and start carving out this wheel. The whole while we are excited about the end result. We are filled with dreams of the future. How awesome it is, we think to ourselves, to finally be building and working toward an inevitable goal. Reinventing Costs Tools, a Whole Lot of Tools! There were times in... Read more
Exclusion This week my wife showed me a picture of her nephew. He had his 13th birthday. He’s one of two boys born to my wife’s younger brother. She hasn’t seen them in a while. Her brother and his wife are involved in a nondenominational church. Exclusion from Family When the boys were little, they always got gifts for birthdays and Christmas from their auntie. Her brother and his wife would send pictures of what they had bought the kids... Read more
Jesus represented our struggles.. I was taught that Jesus represented everyone. In that representation was a surety that he was tempted in everything. Whenever I went through something in life that was a moral challenge, I took courage in the fact that Jesus had faced something similar and had overcome the same challenge by the grace of God. Jesus did not “sin” in that confrontation and following his example of faith, I could somehow beat sin and not fall victim... Read more
Celebrating our Love I know, most people don’t think about the fact that two women could love one another so deeply that they call each other “my perfect” or “beautiful girl”, but we do. We are celebrating our anniversary this month. I’m hoping that by sharing a little with you about our endearing love and how satisfying that love is, perhaps I can touch your heart. That’s what love is all about, isn’t it? We both have a solid belief... Read more
Works Based Righteousness My father was atypical in that he loved to throw out sayings to me. One of them was cliche, so I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of it, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is”. Did you finish that sentence out loud? It’s pretty common and I heard it more times than I could count as a child. I grew up on John Wayne quotes as well. This generation has no clue who “The Duke”... Read more
Waves and Moves of God? I remember when the book came out. It made a splash across the Christian community like a fat kid in a public pool. We all got wet from the fall out. I was a youth pastor in a non-denominational church at the time and my heart was in the right place. I followed the river of mainstream Christianity and drowned with everyone else under the river of guilt and condemnation that always follows such movements.... Read more
Family I will be as honest as I can as I write this. It’s not that I have lost faith or anything of the sort in regard to the family of God. Despite my leaving the institutional church, I still hold a solid belief in my creator and I don’t know that it will ever change. Whether you call Him God, Buddha, Muhammad, or refer to Him as a “Her”, it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I think God is... Read more
The Assessment We were sitting in my office talking. A couple had come in because the husband was seeking mental health treatment. It started the typical way with a lot of words pouring out and then, “She says I’m bipolar but I’m not bipolar. I need someone to properly diagnose me”. He was there to go through a mental health assessment. He was talkative and tangential. One sentence bled into another and I often had to interrupt him to keep... Read more
B Tandy Twenty years or so ago, in Virginia, more specifically the Front Royal area, I learned a valuable lesson. When I first joined the praise and worship team, they lined me up second to last. Who was last? A woman named, B Tandy. That wasn’t her real name, this African American boisterous woman, had earned that nickname from her kids. She was a beautiful woman that had been through a terrible trauma. After having five daughters, her husband was... Read more
Free From Religion, Needing Community I have been outside of the institutional church for a while now. Leaving religion behind to experience light and love was my ambition. While I went through years of deconstruction, and enjoyed being “free” from religion, I still longed for the community. You know, having friends that you spent time with that had a common faith. It’s Not Enough Community is what I miss, but something else nagged at me for years. What in the... Read more
Frustrated Grace
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