The Story of Home

/

Every year I present the big story of the Bible from a new angle: The Story of Light, The Story of Hunger, The Story of Water, The Story of Song — and this year, The Story of Home. When I decided 2020’s concept last October, I had no idea how fraught it was going to be. This year, the concept of home has deeply pressed itself into our hearts, both because we have been trapped in our homes and because we have been prevented from seeing those who feel like home to us. Home is something we have both lived and longed for. Home is a concept that’s tangled up in both our traumas and our treasures.

Read More

Lord, to Whom Shall We Go?

/
Lord, to Whom Shall We Go?

It was a hard thing he said, and they could barely digest it. It upended things they thought they knew, and moreover—it just didn’t make sense. “Who can listen to it?” they grumbled, and he heard. It was ironic. He made the ears that wouldn’t hear him; he perfectly discerned their offended mumbles.

Many of those who’d previously followed closely stopped following that day. Maybe it was too much. Too intense, too confusing, too overwhelming, too rattling to their sense of comfort and stability. Why look to this guy for truth when there were options that clashed less with their sensibilities, that asked them to uproot less of their thinking, that asked them to give less of themselves?

Read More

Telling Kids the True Story of Thanksgiving (And the True Gospel)

/
Telling Kids the True Story of Thanksgiving (And the True Gospel)

As I consider how I’ve been taught and how to teach my children, history clashes loudly with the familiar narratives. It’s tempting for us to force-feed redemption into the stories we tell rather than tell stories as they actually are. However, when we strong-arm redemption, we can short-circuit the powerful experience of longing for a Redeemer—and I don’t want my kids to miss that.

Read More

A Story of Song

/
A Story of Song

The disappointments flatten me, make it hard to get up. So I don’t get up right away. I know I don’t have to. I know it’s okay to notice when I’m crushed right down into the carpet, know it’s okay to be confused about how to get up, know that God is here in this place, among the crumbs and the footprints, among the pieces of broken hope. So I stay.

At some point in the flattening, I make my way, like a paper doll, to the piano bench and rummage through it. It always smells like my grandmother’s house, thick with nostalgia and gentleness. It’s her piano, her piano bench, her sheet music stuffed inside. The ordinary treasures minister to me sometimes, give me fuller perspective when I get tangled in today. I shuffle the papers that belonged to a woman of faith, and I rediscover a picture of Grandmother at the piano, young but the same. A picture of a woman whose song was unfailingly Jesus.

Read More