It’s summertime in the south, which means watermelons are ripe, the humidity is suffocating, and the fireflies are flickering. Twice in the past two weeks I have traipsed out at dusk with a mason jar and nephews and friends’ kids in tow to chase lightning bugs. Within seconds, dozens of flashing neon dots enveloped us. Excitement surged through my veins. We began stalking the illusive insects, darting and reaching and following deeper into the darkness. The children squealed, usually in testimony to their making a capture, but also in the anxiety of holding a fluttering insect inside their tightly-clenched fists. Each bug wase deposited into a mason jar, our make-shift museum, where we could observe them more closely. Interestingly, even though the critteres were trapped, they continued to flicker. Even after we departed for bed, they continued to flicker. 

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When Jesus walked the earth, he flickered across the darkness of sin and depravity. Love and grace radiated from his words. Hope emanated from his works.

            Someone call Child Protective Services. Currently over 2000 abused children wait in detention centers at the U.S/Mexico border after separation from their parents who crossed the border illegally. Earlier this year the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) started dividing families caught crossing the border without papers based on a “zero tolerance” policy on immigration. Even breastfeeding infants got snatched from their mothers.

Whether it was long expected or suddenly faced, the reality is your struggling marriage has come to an impassable fork in the road. You've decided to separate. You're struggling to find the right words to tell your children. Your fears and failures race through your mind, "Will this help us reconcile in the end? Will the the kids be able to understand? Will it cause them to fall away from the Lord?" Through all this uncertainty there are some things you CAN assure them of.

On this day in 1776 the delegates to the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. With that signing our country was born. Today we celebrate America’s birthday. What are we celebrating and why should we remember?

At a time when civil discourse is no longer assumed and disruption of basic rights is prevalent and frequent, it is well to consider and reaffirm the primacy of religious freedom to American democracy and celebrate it.

Motherhood reveals the image of God in a profound way.

I witnessed my friend, Melissa, mother her kids. She peacefully prepared three plates of food for her young boys. Yogurt. Chicken. Ketchup. Noodles. They sat around and ate while trying to teach the baby to say “Bible” and instead he shouts, “Jack, Jack.” The room laughs.

Later that night she held her toddler on her lap for sweet face-to-face time before bed. He curled into Melissa like her lap belongs to him. It does.

Her arms, her face, her knees that bend low to listen. Her hands that hold the book at bedtime.

In some ways her body belongs to her boys because she mothers them with many moments of her day, with every muscle and joint.

While watching Melissa wipe sticky hands, build legos, cook tomato soup, and instruct with wisdom, I realized motherhood reveals the image of God in one profound way.

In a seminary Sexual Ethics course I co-teach, my co-worker and I have students survey churches' curriculum relating to manhood and womanhood. Consistently these students find that evangelical curriculum writers have gone to biblical instruction directed to the "wife" or "husband" and extrapolated from the spouse-specific commands to support their ideas of gender. But wife and husband are only subsets of man and woman. So we need to start at a different place.

“I really try to put away my work phone on the weekends.” “I really want to be fully present with my family this weekend and not focused on work.”

Twice in the past week, I’ve heard these phrases from well-meaning Christians. I’ve also said similar things myself lately. Yet the more I think about our approach to work, the more I realize that our thinking might be flawed.  

In a previous blog post, I'm Scared, Lord, I wrote about my apprehensions concerning my upcoming hip replacement surgery. My doctor was cheerfully confident that I would not experience the post-operative pain I was afraid of, but I was all-too-aware of my potential complications. As a polio survivor, I'm twice as sensitive to pain as those whose brains were not infected by the poliovirus.

On top of that, I was extremely aware of the fact that my severely arthritic hips had become basically frozen, leaving me with a limited range of motion. I knew that the surgeon and her team would be moving my legs in all kinds of unnatural (to me) contortions during the surgery, and I was extremely concerned about how my muscles and ligaments might scream in protest once I woke up from surgery. So I was scared.

My husband and I are officially unemployed with three children and a car note. This didn't occur by happenstance, rather our employment status was the result of deliberate prayer and decision. Approximately 6 months ago I found myself driving to an ordinary ministry conference on an ordinary day only to be met with an extraordinary message—Christianity was not meant to be comfortable!

Let's see the picture of Christianity that Jesus painted for his disciples:

1Thess 5 “Thorns, Thistles and God’s Will”

Thorns and Thistles are part of our world and when experiencing them we respond with “ouch.”

 But, children also meet them as thorny people. Their attitude and countenance says, leave me alone.  You ask how they are doing but their response is a cold shoulder. OUCH. What did I do to deserve that?