Even when life is good, during seasons when all seems right with the world, I sometimes still experience unnamed longings. They are deep, elusive feelings, as if there is something that I know I need but is not within reach. When I sit with them, I come to understand...
The Bible tells us that Jesus was countercultural. His Jewish upbringing and the mores of his day tell us that he lived in a world with many boundaries between races, religions, and also gender. The life of women in biblical times was oppressive. In this patriarchal...
In the compelling book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson, the young lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, gives us an unforgettable look inside this legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the...
I grew up in an Italian family in a predominantly Italian community in the western suburbs of Chicago where I learned how the pillars of my ethnic heritage are open hearts, open doors, warm hospitality, and the sacredness of the table. My grandparents emigrated to...
We are both cancer survivors, my husband and I. Like many people, I had always feared hearing that diagnosis. My father, a non-smoker, had lung cancer, passing on at age 68 just three months after being diagnosed. My mother had bladder cancer in her 80s that required...
I have the pleasure of introducing you to Jenny Rae Armstrong, a teaching pastor of Darrow Road Wesleyan Church in Superior, Wisconsin. Jenny is an award-winning freelance journalist who writes about faith, social justice, missional living and women’s issues for...
“If I hear, ‘You have such a pretty face’ one more time, I am going to scream. Really. It won’t matter who said it and it won’t matter where I am. I am simply going to scream.” Jemma cradled her old school, low tech, corded landline phone in the crook between her...
Author Sharon Garlough Brown (MDiv, Princeton Theological Seminary) is a pastor, spiritual director and retreat leader who is passionate about shepherding others deep into the love of God. Her book Sensible Shoes was named one of television personality Kathie Lee...
Jeremiah 17:5—8: This is what the Lord says: “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans and turn their hearts away from the Lord. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, on the salty...
A true survivor. That’s what I think of when I remember my maternal grandmother. She was a woman who experienced being left behind when, as a young bride, her husband sailed for America for a better life for his family; a tragic mishap in which her firstborn daughter...
