Spiritual Formation

As I sat down with a student I was discipling, she boldly said, “It’s okay; I don’t need to worry about my job, because God knows the plans he has for me, and they’re for me to prosper and what not.”

A Pharisee and a tax collector walk into the temple.

My fascination with Lent began with a half-hearted fast when I was a freshman in college.

Among the recurring stress dreams commonly reported by people, perhaps this is the most familiar: you show up at school only to realize that you’ve forgotten about a quiz or final exam.

The goal of disciplined piano practice is not to master the piano.

In our roughly 12x12 family office (with about 6.5-foot ceilings, I might add), I embarrassingly have 39 items with a San Francisco 49ers logo on them. 

A therapist once pointedly suggested that I was experiencing shame. I promptly suggested she was wrong.

Right now the Internet is full of predictions, invitations to new year’s resolutions, and promises about what 2017 could be with the right [insert latest product/diet/happy thought here].

If I, a woman, were to write the gospel of the entry of God into the world as one of us, I’m pretty sure I would not start with his human genealogy, as Matthew does. 

Advent is a season of anticipation. Anticipation for a Savior to bring light into a dark world. But it has a melancholy tenor to it. It’s the time before the joyous celebration of Jesus’ birth that we remember at Christmas. A time of uncertainty.