Those who have been saved by Jesus are left with a common call: be citizens of his kingdom in our present world. Our faith is spilled out in our actions. This is not in an attempt to save ourselves, but to be ambassadors of Jesus’ kingdom.
Category: Calling
How To Be A Wild-Haired Prophet
Imagine, if you will, yourself on the shores of the river Jordan. Down by the river is a man—long-haired, dressed in camel skin—yelling at the top of his lungs.
The Isles | What I Take Home
(The Isles is a series of reflections on my recent trip to Ireland and England.) It’s good to benefit as much as possible from the journeys and trips one must make. Vincent van Gogh When you take a trip, you hope to bring something back with you — to somehow be changed by your experience….
The Isles | Transcendence
Transcendence describes something that transports us beyond our physical existence, something whose whole is on another spiritual plane than the sum of its parts.
Dear Vincent
(Part of my series Letters to Dead People) Dear Vincent, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. It’s not surprising, really, since you’re my favorite painter. Your works are on four walls in my apartment (hopefully more soon). I have several books of your paintings and sketches. I have a small figurine of you…
Entertaining Angels
Several governors and other politicians in the United States, many of whom tout their “Christian values” and this as a “Christian nation,” have said that we should take no Syrian refugees because one such refugee was amongst the many terrorists who recently attacked Paris. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing Syria. They are…
Liturgical Leanings
Occasionally, seeing how other brothers and sisters in Christ have celebrated and pointed themselves to the gospel over the centuries can enrich our experience of that same gospel all the more
On Going to Seminary
I graduated from seminary almost four years ago now. I still live in the city where my seminary is, and I even work full-time at the school. Because of this, I’m able to talk with a lot of current students and my fellow alumni. I’ve noticed some common threads that weave through these discussions and…
Ghosts
“There are more things in heaven and on earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” – Hamlet (William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5) It’s a phenomenon at least as old as written history. You’re alone in a house, and yet you don’t feel alone. You see a shadow, or perhaps a strange reflection…
The Artist-Pastor Identity Crisis, Part 2
I was talking with a coworker recently. An English major when he was in college who loves writing stories and reading Dostoevsky, he is now studying at the seminary in order to hopefully plant a church overseas someday. We spoke of stories we liked and environments that seemed to inspire us, like gothic buildings and…
