This year for Advent I decided to try a new resource for my personal devotional time. I picked up a copy of O Come, O Come Emmanuel – A Liturgy for Daily Worship from Advent to Epiphany. I am so excited to share this resource with you. It has stirred my heart to reflect on…

Music has a way of embedding itself in my brain and becoming very meaningful to me. I also have a knack for stumbling across new songs that seem fit my particular situation at that particular moment just perfectly. I thought it might be fun to go back through the music I listened to this year…

I’m struggling a little bit right now with the fact that it doesn’t seem like God is writing my story the way I thought he would and the way I hoped he would. Frankly, and I know this sounds arrogant and blasphemous, I don’t think God is doing it right.  Ever since I was young,…

On our first day in Thailand, we attended a worship service with the kids and staff at the ZOE children’s home. Our team stood on the stage and introduced ourselves to the room by saying our names. An instruction was given to the room in Thai, and almost before it had a chance to be…

Peterson, Andrew. Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making. Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2019. I finished Adorning the Dark in about five days flat. It would have been four days if I hadn’t spent one of those days getting things done around the house instead of reading. I don’t think…

Fujijmura, Makoto. Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for our Common Life. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017. Culture Care was refreshing to my soul. It was like a breath of fresh air to pick up this book and read his words about beauty, shalom, culture care, and art. He writes like an artist (because he is…

One of the most fundamental aspects of loving your neighbor is treating other human beings like they are the image of God…because they are. Just as I am the image of God, so also is my neighbor, my brother, my sister, my friend, my roommate. There is dignity, worth, and value that are to be…

Elizabeth Elliot. For some, the name calls to mind her many books – Shadow of the Almighty, Passion and Purity, Through Gates of Splendor, and The Savage my Kinsman among others. For others the name is associated with the story of her first husband, Jim, killed by a tribe in Ecuador. Some may have heard…

My childhood memory snapshots are full of playing games with my dad, waiting for him to come home from work, going out for birthday breakfast with him, getting donuts on Saturday mornings, and taking road trips with my dad driving. One year, my dad taught us science. We did experiments that had to do with…

Richards, E. Randolph, and Brandon J. O’Brien. Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. Downer’s Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012. In Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, Randy and Brandon pull from years of personal experience and faithful biblical study to present us with the stark fact that our cultural assumptions, when they go unnoticed, may cause us to…