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Why is Good Friday, well . . . good? Even a casual acquaintance with Good Friday observance suggests it ought to be called Sad Friday, Bad Friday, or God Is Really, Really Mad Friday. (Sorry—I couldn’t resist the Dr. Seuss allusion.) The question remains, however: why call it Good Friday when the events are so horrifyingly bad? 

There I was, almost 25 years old, hugging a toilet bowl in the middle of the day

Why am I here? I want to be on campus, ministering to my students. I want to be seeing people come to Jesus! Healing! Miracles! Life transformation!

Instead, I was scrubbing a toilet in an assisted living home.

In this crucial moment, kneeling on the bathroom floor, resentment swelled in my throat and stung like bile.

What’s the difference between a haircut and an amputation?

I distinctly remember one visit to a church youth event in my teens. 

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.”

Simplicity and minimalism are buzzwords that come and go, attracting a lot of attention and then fading away again.

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.

What does it mean to be American?

For the last five years, I’ve been a part of a religious community that prays the Magnificat—Mary’s song of praise upon finding herself pregnant with Jesus—twice a day.