What if God not only loves me, but also likes me? I am learning to receive and trust in his delight in me.

I’ve found that the practice that has done the most to cultivate a heart of gratitude to God is not a mental list of things to be thankful for, but a physical posture that allows me to reach for God, right in the moment.

My season of life is full and busy, and reading has continued to be joyful, restful, beautiful, enriching, and absolutely necessary. 

Will stress be part of the picture over the next few weeks, even in our most anticipated moments and dearest traditions? Oh, for sure. But it doesn’t tell the whole story. I can also let it be fun.

Tomorrow marks the start of the Christian New Year. But this new year comes in not with a bang, but with a groan. Not with goal setting and a good decluttering, but with deep longing.

Our participation in the electoral process forms us and trains us. Into whose image and toward what vision of goodness—well, that all depends.

I think the closest thing to a full-blown Wild West shootout we have today are the volley of shots fired from Christian parenting-focused social media accounts. What is going on under the surface, and where do we need God’s healing and a better story?

The hilarious story of how my son lost his tooth during communion, and welcoming our children as the Church of today, not the Church of the future.

May you find yourself in a “thin place” between heaven and earth, where the goodness and peace and delight of the new creation isn’t that hard to imagine.

A prayer for my little girl on National Daughters Day

A phrase I hadn’t noticed before in the story of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 reminded me of the deep goodness and gifts of growing older.

One of my favorite posts of the year! I reflect on seven years on our street and in this house, and on seasons of receiving as a sign of God’s coming Kingdom.

We need books that, instead of preparing us to go toe-to-toe with one another, show us how to walk shoulder-to-shoulder as we receive Jesus’s gospel of grace and welcome the kingdom of God.

Here are some questions I have personally found to be helpful to consider when reading any book on a hot-button cultural topic.

Perhaps the abundance we’re looking for is hiding in plain sight.

“Loving our enemies” is not a mere lens through which to see the world, but a mandate Jesus actually means us to follow. Jesus shows us the depth of his meaning as he embodies his own words on the Cross, saying of those those who falsely accused, mocked, tortured, and murdered him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

If I am to follow Jesus into loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, then I must do it here, right where I am.

Once we are with Jesus and all this death and mourning have been met with God’s comfort, and heaven and earth have been joined finally and forever, we’ll have a lot of fun and have the joy of eternity-long, open-hearted, uncomplicated friendship. 

The words of Jesus cut through our native tongue of fear, offering us a new language of hope, not outside of, but right in the midst of our fears.

Those scarred hands alone can hold the gratitude and deep sadness we’re feeling all in the same breath as we praise him for a decade together.

I wonder what life might spring up in our world if we held our mandate from our Creator to “fill and subdue” (Gen. 1) with the posture of a child, full of joy, delight, awe, and curiosity.