Spiritual Formation

My wife has a cherished collection of hand-painted, fine china tea cups that she keeps on the top shelf of a cupboard. These cups are kept separate from our ordinary coffee mugs and brought down from their place of safety and display on special occasions.

Poor is such a confusing word. We normally think of poverty as a bad thing, the kind of thing that shows up in shock-value statistics like 43 percent of people in the world live on less than $2 a day, or poverty causes the deaths of 22,000 children a day.

Advent is about longing. It’s a time to remember the Israelites’ years of waiting for the Messiah, and to focus on our own longing for a deeper sense of Emmanuel in our daily lives as well as for Jesus’ return.

I lost both of my parents in September. I’m mourning deeply, of course, but I also find a deep gratitude welling up for the many gifts they gave me.

Three weeks ago, I asked several hundred college students a question: What is your biggest obstacle today to giving your whole life for God’s global mission?

How often do we view our citizenship as a gift that we’ve been given to steward?

"It is not enough for freedom to be won. It must also be sustained. Cultural observer Os Guinness argues that the American experiment in freedom is at risk....He calls us to reconsider the audacity of sustainable freedom and what it would take to restore it.” 

Distracted. This is the new normal. Checking your phone is now a reflex, a default. But technology is not just a shiny new tool, it’s like a prescription drug that we’ve become addicted to.

As a little girl, I had a negative perspective of the word ‘different.’ Why? Because throughout elementary and middle school I was teased and made fun of because I was different. So over time, I changed how different I was, to blend in.

There is such a thing as healthy, mature disagreement. I know there is. I have seen it a few times in my life and it is a beautiful thing. Unfortunately, it is not that common. I have seen the opposite—the passive aggressiveness, the gossiping, the judgmental assumptions, the divisive