Month: June 2017

She Walks in Black and White

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Do you find ambiguity frustrating? As a 1 on the Enneagram, I enjoy some good old-fashioned dichotomies: the solid world of black-and-white truth. Sometimes life doesn’t allow for that, but if you gather up the bunches of Scripture that pertain to a girl who trusts God, you’ll discover there’s a pleasant clarity about what kind of character she cultivates. Remember, as we’ve been dwelling on the Proverbs 31 woman, we’ve sunk our teeth into the fact that she’s not someone to be copied so much as emulated. There are a thousand different ways of each attribute working itself out.

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The Lord My Rock Piler

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We serve a good God, and I’m constantly finding new favorite things about Him. One such example is His habit of building reminders into the culture of His people. He knew we have terribly short memory spans, and His compassion toward us prompted an insistence on visuals that would bring us back to truth. There’s a great story in Joshua 4 where the Lord calls His leaders to pile up some big river rocks so that “When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”

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Daddy Issues

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In a time and place where people are divided by a million things—Democrat or Republican, black or white, fries or tots—it’s good to remember what we share in common. As humans, we cherish secret hopes. We revolve around a unique set of values. We long deeply for love. And most of us have daddy issues. I’ve met remarkably few people whose stories depict a healthy, thriving relationship with their father over the long haul. For whatever reason, good dads are in short supply at this point. With all of the baggage surrounding our earthly fathers, it’s easy to foster misconceptions about our heavenly Father: who He is, what He’s like, how He thinks of us.

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Girly Photo Scavenger Hunt (Summer)

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It’s time for another seasonal field trip! On your next free day or weekend, grab some sunscreen and a girlfriend or two and hit the road. Extra points for old school film, but phones work just fine. I know there’s a temptation to post every shot you take; consider keeping this just for you. Having secret adventures that don’t wind up on social media is good for the soul—you worry less about appearances and angles and filters and spend more time actually enjoying the moment.

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The Party Life

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If I could transport myself to any fictional event, Bilbo’s birthday party would be high up on my wish list. The lights, the dancing, the food, the fireworks, and the one-of-a-kind speech. Hobbits know how to have a good time, and festival atmospheres characterize their rhythm of life. Jokes fill the air. Typically grumpy elders let down their guard and join in the fun. Here, under the lanterns, uninhibited community is built in a strikingly unique way.

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A Few of My Favorite Things

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Happy June, friends! Let’s bust out the mowers and grills, crank some fresh playlists, and light up our fire pits! The mosquitos may be big, but our blessings are bigger. God is working all things for our good and His glory—we just have to be disciplined enough to catch how. So spread a blanket and find shooting stars. Try a new salad combination. Browse the bookshelves and the coffee shop and the dance studio and the street corners to find glimpses of glory. They’re there, I promise.

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The Most Excellent Adventure

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I’ve been dwelling on the gospel lately: what it is and what it means. If you just glance at it as it rolls by like hills on a road trip, you’ll be robbed of the full force of the truth. Sure, creation, fall, redemption, restoration—the gospel—it’s important on Sunday morning, but what about on a Friday afternoon? Oh, friends, we need a new map. This is, after all, our own adventure—we find ourselves somewhere in the middle of this epic, oscillating between the fall and redemption phases. Let’s pull the van over, grab a picnic, take off our shoes, and see what the hills feel like under our bare toes. Come plop yourself down into the middle of each gospel stage and poke around a bit. Smell it, taste it, get its substance under your fingernails.

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