The Hole in our Gospel–Reading Program Week Seven

Chapter Five: The Three Greatest Commandments So how are you doing in your reading? We’re seven weeks into our collective reading of The Hole In Our Gospel and I imagine that you’re beginning to craft ideas of what we could potentially do through Grace Church to contribute to God’s mercy mission in the world. I would love to hear your ideas. If you have any…

Pretending until it’s real

“All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.” Thus said Screwtape, the shrewd demon mentor, to Wormwood, the demon-in-training, in C.S. Lewis’ classic The Screwtape Letters. I think Screwtape was onto something. Self-help and success experts have long preached the virtue of acting in ways that are consistent with our desired outcomes. If we want to be musicians we must…

The Hole in our Gospel Reading Program–Week Six

Chapter Four: The Towering Pillars of Compassion and Justice Kidnapping…trafficking…children forced to serve as violent soldiers…sexual exploitation…these horrifying acts of human degradation are nearly too gruesome to fathom. As Richard Stearns said, if Satan is alive and manifesting himself in our world, he is surely present in these places of horror.[1] For many people the presence of such explicit evil is an indicator that there…

The Greatest Christian Myth Ever Told

“God will never give you more than you can carry.” I’m not sure how this phrase became so widely popularized because it’s not even remotely true. God often gives us more than we can carry, and the weight of our daily burdens routinely threatens to crush us. Moses said, “I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.” (Numbers…

Some inspired/uninspired thoughts about Moms

A mother is a person, who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces that she never did care for pie. ~ Tenneva Jordan Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. ~ Lisa Alther I was so ugly my mother used to feed me with a slingshot. ~ Rodney Dangerfield The phrase “working mother”…