John Chapman once advised followers to “pray as you can, and do not try to pray as you can’t,” as a way of encouraging both freedom from the way others say we should pray as well as direction from someone who lives well a life of prayer.
Dear God, Could you please stop fixing sporting events? Your unpredictability is killing me at the betting table. I can never figure out who you’re helping. One moment you’re hooking up Steve Smith with the Panthers (well, you used to hook him up–he must have been a naughty boy this past year), and the next […]
Young reviews Gina Oschner’s critically acclaimed novel THE RUSSIAN DREAMBOOK OF COLOR AND FLIGHT, with an eye to how the novel’s post-Soviet characters mirror Young’s own experience living with her missionary family in Latvia.
In this theological response to the Haiti earthquake, Nathan Kerr suggests that rather than merely speaking about God, Christians should inhabit a mode of speaking to God that responds to the oppressed victims of Haiti by living in solidarity with them, both in revolt against the powers that oppress and in hope that God might liberate them to live and love freely.
This is a second poem by Elizabeth Hoover that uses the photography of Saul Leiter as a source for meditative dialogue on the nature of an image.
In this lyrical essay, Jessie van Eerden reflects on her upbringing in a rural West Virginia church and wonders “if the words of our childhood faith-lives—words like worship, praise, holiness—have any real clout for us when we really stare them in the face as adults and when, out of the corner of our eyes, we see more and more brokenness in the world.”
This essay advocates a biblical emphasis on life promotion and suicide prevention as freedom from a fatalistic and tragic life, especially in contrast to the ancient Greek fascination with death and suicide.
In this poem by Courtney Druz we are challenged to “grow beyond the brittle carapace” of our selves and “leap like an ibex” from the “crags” of our doubt.