On-Brand or In Your Identity?: “I Wanna Be” Meets the Great “I AM”
We want to live in an important story. We just don’t know what our important story is.
The Tree of Life, a Colossal Corn Stalk, and a Feral Foster Child
Jake came to live with Stacy when he was six. Born a fetal alcohol baby, he’d been abandoned as unmanageable by four different foster homes already. His bright brown eyes and mischievous grin signaled a child behind the almost feral face and spidery tangle of skinny arms and legs. Stacy, an elementary school teacher, was…
A Big Welcome from Small Churches
Welcoming marginalized people is often seen as a challenging task beyond the resources of the ordinary congregation. But the smallest congregations often do an outstanding job of including the marginalized as part of the family of God. It’s six months since John died, and his colorfully decorated tambourine still hangs on the pew where he…
Joyfully Chasing the Wind
I encountered Ecclesiastes long before I knew much about God. My honors English teacher forced our roomful of ambitious high school juniors to dig through the King James text to figure out what the word vanity means. “Vanity of vanities … all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:2, KJV). Meaningless was among the synonyms our class came…
A Cake, the Klan, a Senator’s Stand
Once again, it was Winnie and me behind the bake sale table, while all the real excitement of the annual plant sale swirled through adjacent rooms. Winnie is a whiz at organizing the diverse, nearly random donations from friends of the land trust. Arrayed around us on three cloth-covered tables are blueberry cake, rhubarb and…