Zechariah was stricken mute once, according to the book of Luke. It went like this. An angel told him he’d have a son and name him John, and Z couldn’t believe his ears. Obviously the angel had only one option: condemning him to nine months of muteness. (Sunday school lesson: Don’t mess with angels.) This sounds horrific. Yet sometimes I wish […]
In the book Follow Me to Freedom, Shane Claiborne and John M. Perkins tack a little note onto Proverbs 29:18 and it goes like this: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” “Or at least run around in circles.” (Disclaimer: I’ve lost this book somewhere in the boxes of my vagabond life, so that may […]
There’s a conversation that I keep circling back to. I don’t know why. It always goes badly. But I also found recently that I’m an INFP (thank you, Drs. Myers and Briggs), which means that even though I hate conflict, I’m so deeply motivated by the things I believe in that I’ll always keep coming […]
I was scolded once by a professor for ending a presentation with the four honest words, “That’s all I have.” And I think this speaks something to my silence here over the past (eep) month or so. I’m imagining myself trailing you down the hallway repeating, “Well, what was I supposed to say?” It’s not […]
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh” . . . . But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went on […]
I may have detected a flaw in our western brand of Christian faith. Maybe you should sit down. I think that, if we expect God to work at all, we expect him to work instantly. We march to the orders of the clock, not to the rhythms of the seasons and sunsets and cows. We have no patience for God or for lines […]
la corbeille 