As we look back on the most memorable moments in our lives, we look back with joy and celebration. We try to recall the things that make us feel good and forgot the things that don’t. During this Advent season, what do you think it would be like if you intentionally focused on the less than pleasant memories in your past to gain new insight about yourself?
Read MoreThe dark days of winter stretch from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. Cloudy skies force the sun to take cover. I feel alone. Slow home-school mornings compete with news feeds of election season anxiety, and air thick with virus. Although I see the faces of four eager-to-please children, I know the weight of their isolation in my chest.
Jesus, I declare, “Come.”
Read MorePerhaps this Thursday, we can all sit, mourn, and honor the peoples who cultivated the earth under our feet, who cared for the animals, and one another. Perhaps as illness rampages across the country we will finally begin to comprehend in the tiniest way how a virus can change the way we work, live, eat, and gather. Perhaps we begin to repent. Perhaps we begin to know gratitude in our repentance.
Read MoreRead Moreibrancy and beauty will come around again.
Did you know, Revelation 5:8 paints a celestial picture of the prayers of the saints as the incense filling golden bowls, brought before the Lamb? Our prayers are not forgotten.
Read MoreHope is,
Hope is a spark.
Shooting out from my fingers,
Pow, pow, pow!
Hitting the powder on the ground,
Blasting like fireworks to the dark.
It screams,
I (boom) am (crash) here (pow).
Esperanza is the treasure found in the faces of resiliency of our tias y tios, abuelas, the heroes in our village and the ones we’ve only heard about. Those that have sung a soundtrack of peace through the night.
Read MoreCruel mysteries surround us
About a plundered earth
Where people are pillaged,
Possessions cherished,
And cravings for power, insatiable.
With certain skin shades despised
While another is idolized.
Where there are wars and walls,
Image bearers banished to cages.
Read MoreGod doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t grow tired or weary. My burdens or the burdens of those I love are never too much for him.
Instead, Jesus invites us to allow him to carry all that weighs heavily on us.
Read MoreOn one hand hope fuels me to meet creative deadlines, stirred by the notion that my words will fall on ears to hear and eyes to see. Hope ignites passion to sit with clients who are filled with rumblings of despair as they look over the debris of trauma in their lives. Hope gives birth to desire and longing for repaired relationships.
Read MoreHope is like believing someone. A feeling of trust or something like that. Hope is hmmmmm.
Read More2020 is covered by a dark cloud of hopelessness. A cloud that threatens to suffocate us. A cloud that shows no signs of dissipating.
This overwhelming presence of hopelessness continues to creep toward us and pound on the door to our mind, body, and soul wanting us to give up and let it come pouring in.
Read MoreA candle flickers
in the night
And the breather of breath
purses her lips
letting out
a slow and gentle
lifeline.
Read MoreTime flies. And the formless, empty places of my heart, are a greater part, partially because I cannot find my heart. A heart where spaces feel empty – like before they were transformed.
Read MoreHow will hope hold the complexity of systems, people, polarized political parties, governments, estranged friends – faith communities divided? Is hope light enough to find goodness and heavy enough to sit in despair? Will hope provide for the hopeless without asking me or them to live in fantasy?
Read MoreThose who have passed, whose blood cries out to us – the Abels, wait for us to begin to slow down. We have a difficult choice. Will we listen? In a time of protesting, rioting, anger and rage, the blood of Abel deserves an answer.
Read MoreSo, you are asking what to do? Your eager to find hope? You’re rushing to grief?
Then, do the hard and bloody work of fighting for hope.
Repent. Repent. Repent.
Read MoreThe sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. 14 There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!”
Read MoreI want to mourn, I want to grieve, but I’m not ready to be comforted, not yet. I won’t be rushed to be comforted. I won’t be rushed to let go of my anger. I won’t be rushed through my rage. I cannot be. I don’t want to be. I want to linger.
Read MoreJesus stood in front of the donkey, got on it, no scars yet and they all cheered as he entered the city. I cannot watch the live feed of Facebook without wondering if I am another onlooker, or observer, cheering for the next great moment of harm in someone’s life.
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