When I was a teenager, I was full of passion for truth and righteousness. Churches were doing lots of studies on personality types and spiritual gifts, and I was off-the-charts “justice-oriented” vs. “mercy” or “goal-oriented” vs. “people-oriented” or whatever the term for “black-and-white thinker / prophet / exhorter / teacher.” Which is great if God […]
I hesitated, as I stood over the trash can, and took a deep breath. It seemed sacrilegious to throw away a perfectly good book. I caressed the elegant cover and flipped through the pages one more time. I re-read the title, so full of promise, so beautiful, so appealing. Then I reminded myself: “It’s this, […]
The first time I envied someone’s Bible, it was a good thing. I was still new to the high school youth group, still carrying the pristine white King James leather-bound children’s Bible my great-grandmother had given me for my fifth birthday. His was a Student Bible, with the cover all scratched and beat up, and […]
So often I have felt caught—torn between the sinful, imperfect woman I am and the woman I desperately long to be. The woman I sometimes am, or pretend to be. The woman who Jesus sees, the woman I will one day be. And I have felt stuck. Unable to move forward, unable to make any […]
You can’t read the Gospels without seeing His love and mercy and grace. His compassion for those caught in sin, bowed down with guilt and shame. Jesus was called “a friend of sinners” because He deliberately sought out those who were lost… society’s outcasts, the undesirables, the untouchables. The ragamuffins. He went looking for them and […]
