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Is It Safe to Open My Eyes Now?
I write this post two days before the US elects its next president. By the time you read this, the election would have already passed. The election results won’t make a difference to me. (Translation: I’m jaded.) Too many people have died from COVID, riots, and racism this year. Add to that unemployment, mask wars (a.k.a. selfishness), hurricane after hurricane, and fire after fire. We came into this election season an exhausted hostile nation—already overwhelmed with anxiety and grief. I can picture the devil high-fiving his minions right now over their victory at dividing our nation. There is no real winner here. Because a presidential election can’t buy peace…
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On Suicide
The incidence of depression, anxiety and suicide has skyrocketed as the isolation and life-disruption from Covid-19 has ravaged our world. I wrote this post in April 2013. Over the weekend, Rick Warren (pastor of Saddleback Church in California, author of The Purpose Driven Life) and his wife Kay revealed that their son Matthew had taken his life after a lifelong struggle with mental illness. In an email to his church, Pastor Warren wrote, “[O]nly those closest knew that he struggled from birth with mental illness, dark holes of depression, and even suicidal thoughts. In spite of America’s best doctors, meds, counselors, and prayers for healing, the torture of mental illness…
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Homogeneity is Easy (But Unity’s Better)
Can I be frank with you? Homogeneity is easy. Whole cultures exist where people have common stories and experiences, surrounded by people who speak the same language (both literally and figuratively). Exhausted from the fractalization, Americans daydream of such utopia, like Camelot or Wakanda or maybe Finland. Meanwhile across our melting pot, we don’t share anything but angst. Is holding a door patriarchal or polite? Does our compliment show appreciation or reveal underlying racism? Requiring masks wise or a lack of faith? Is there any politician, educator, or mommy blogger who isn’t accused of being extreme and trying to ruin the country? Chasms cut and crosscut the nation, including…
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Living in Limbo
Normal. Where has it gone? A few months ago my boys romped on playgrounds daily and bounced into their church classrooms on Sundays. Today we watch church online and debate whether it’s safe to start pre-k this fall. The routine we once enjoyed feels years removed. In its place we navigate endlessly changing regulations, mask mandates, and shifting data. As much as I want to believe this will be over soon, I know the end isn’t quite in site. So I’m learning to live in limbo. It’s a hard lesson, isn’t it? Letting go of the past and embracing the present—however messy and uncertain it feels. Here are a few…
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Above All Else––A Message for Weary Souls
As this over-the-top-difficult year wears on and hopes for a summer reprieve or a maskless fall fade, my mind can struggle to muster up positivity. I’ve heard I’m not alone. Apparently many of us wrestle with the lack of normalcy, inability to plan a way forward, and uncertainty of how long “this” will last.
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Confronting Change with Courage
“ I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble and suffering, but take courage --I have conquered the world..” John 16:33 (NET)
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Freedom to Do What?
Another celebration of our country’s freedoms will occur in just a few days.[1] The focus is generally on friends, food, and fireworks. Our country’s freedoms somehow seem to get lost in the celebrations each year. This is a sad reality, but an even sadder reality occurs in our everyday life concerning freedoms. I tend to forget these freedoms and spent some time recently reminding myself of them. These freedoms seem to come on the flip side of some things I am naturally bound to do. With the occurrence of COVID-19, I am more aware of my seemingly loss of personal freedoms during 2020. I am naturally bound to want to…
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The One, Two Punch: Choosing Not to Fear
Proverbs 4:23 Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. How is your heart today? Seared by that slow motion snuff-film video? Rattled by the riots? Don’t they feel like a one, two gut punch? On top of the virus threat that lurks out there as we begin to venture out? My heart is grieved and angry over that video. And I’ve been ambushed by fear several times in the last few days. Maybe you have too. If you read my April 7th post, you may remember that because of my failure to wholeheartedly trust God during the Great Recession crisis of 2008, I determined…
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Part II: Every Tribe, Language, People, and Nation: Revelation and Flying Buttons
If anyone happens to see the elephant standing on my chest, please ask it to step off. Could be asthma. Could be anxiety. Maybe both. At the grocery store two days ago I couldn’t believe my eyes—a crowded store with minimal social distancing or use of face masks. The governor lifted the lockdown because he wanted to boost the economy—not because the coronavirus evaporated. I want things to go back to normal, too. Or do I? The Great Realisation, a video poem circulating YouTube and Facebook, outlines the way of the world prior to COVID-19. With the catchphrase, “Hindsight’s 2020,” a father reads his son a bedtime story describing…
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Leading Through a Pandemic: Three Questions for Ministry Leaders
Today I’m happy to have as my guest, Morgan Eseke. After studying leaders during high-stakes, high-pressure situations for more than two decades, Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative summarizes: “Crises are most often over-managed and under-led.” Researchers explained that leaders often find themselves making decisions based on the tyranny of the urgent. And in doing so they fail to gaze beyond the crisis to intentionally lead others through the uncertainty toward a more promising future. Certainly, woven into the DNA of Christian faith is an outlook oriented toward a promising future. As we sit in the midst of a pandemic that has overturned normal ministry operations and shattered plans, we can…
