God is a pattern-maker; we are pattern seekers. Patterns give us stability in a world that sometimes feels beyond every measure of our control. But patterns are also in place to help us interpret what happens to us. And interpretation is critical. Assigning a God-centered purpose and value (interpretation) to our experiences is what the […]
God has created a spiritual kingdom in which subtraction is addition. What is taken from us leads not to poverty, but to riches buried in union with God. Finding those riches, however, is a matter of spiritual digging. It often takes years of sifting through mud and rock. We lose faith and cast down the […]
There are two portraits of love I experience on a daily basis. The first I call Mona Lisa love. Think of the painting. It’s calm, settled, and content. With its subtle smile, this sort of love (expressed in words and actions) aims to make everyone happy, to offend no one, and to dissolve all tension. […]
It’s come home to me that giving is often the fruit of hardship. That was one of the main themes in Finding Hope in Hard Things. Through the hard things that we face, God shapes us into givers, for that’s what he is. There is a relationship—though we want to deny it in our spirit—between […]
Utterly inadequate. That’s usually how I feel in the midst of something difficult, like a bird without wings, watching the rest of his flock whip past him. It can be something huge, like watching my father die or slogging through the day with an anxiety disorder. But it can also be something small, like trying […]
Suffering shows our soul its softness. It sends away our dreams of being secure as stone. It reminds us that the movement we feel in life isn’t our bounding forward into some greater version of freedom; it’s our spinning on a potter’s wheel kicked into motion by a God with great feet. Our longing is […]