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Fellowship of Saints and Sinners

[NOTE: If you’re noticing an absence of images in recent posts, it’s because we’re experiencing some technical difficulties uploading images.  Thanks for bearing with us!] This Father’s Day I’ll be preaching to Fairview Presbyterian Church on a text that will be familiar to many of you— from the last chapter of Matthew. (Some of you…

Yesterday I visited a dying woman at the hospital.  I do this sort of thing pretty regularly these days as a hospice chaplain.  Her daughter was there, tearful but steady. She said her family was Christian and that they were grateful in times like these for “salvation.”  She choked up when I asked whether she…

This week I’m making my way through Flannery O’Connor’s book of short stories Everything That Rises Must Converge.  (The book’s title comes from the first story that appears in this series of O’Connor’s stories.) Three stories in, I’m struck by a common crescendo that describes O’Connor’s stories: her characters seem in some ways hopelessly and…

This week’s mental health break comes from Mindy Kaling’s Class Day speech to graduates of Harvard Law School.  In addition to its main point—that these fresh-faced graduates of Harvard Law have the opportunity to use their power for good and not for “evil”—Kaling’s spiel features some especially amusing remarks about her own alma mater Dartmouth,…

Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Goldfinch, all 776 pages of it, was beach reading this past week.  In addition to being one of those books that drips with brilliance on just about every page and is hard to put down, it brims with the kind of writing that, if you’re a bit of a…

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), also known as “the Little Flower of Jesus,” was a French Carmelite nun who had wisdom beyond her years.  I stumbled across her reflections on living in the present in a little devotional I’ve been using lately, A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People: If I did not simply…

One of the reasons I keep showing up at this intersection between life and God is you, your comments, your questions, and even in some cases, your downright infuriating remarks (which also keep me writing). The other day Jan thanked me for my post on John Piper’s call for a “masculine Christianity.”  That post sparked…

The older I get the more I’m convinced wandering is essential to rest.  A soul that has come to rest has known what it means to wander.  And, God forbid that our souls should ever only rest and never wander in this life!  This would make us less than human. Our souls can wander in…

A few days ago my grandmother died. It’s poignantly fitting that “Grandmom Peggy” made her exit from this life just before Mother’s Day. She was after all a mother to six children. I only quite recently discovered how much Grandmom Peggy genuinely loved kids. During occasional visits to the Rio Grande home that she designed,…

The other day at a local library book sale I stumbled upon a $1 copy of The Onion Ad Nauseum: Complete News Archives. Needless to say, I bought it—and I’m now convinced that next to the Bible The Onion should be required reading for all Christians. Okay, I’m kidding. But seriously, it’s a great way to…
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