The Question That Breaks the Sunday
For some people the hardest part of church is not the theology or the music or the sermon. It is the moment someone turns to them in the foyer and asks the one question they have been dreading all week.
A Future and a Hope, For the One Who May Never Leave
What do you say to a young man in his twenties who has been told, quietly and without fanfare, that the rehab centre is not a waystation back to ordinary life, but simply his life? What does hope mean when the horizon does not change?
The Stones He Did Not Forget
The stoning of Paul at Lystra. It is hard to read it without thinking that Paul, lying in the dust outside the city, may have remembered another stoning — one he had once stood by and approved of.
Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given
Henri Nouwen pointed out that the gospel writers used four words to describe what Jesus did with the bread. He took it. He blessed it. He broke it. He gave it. Nouwen believed these four movements describe not just a miracle but a life. Yours.
The Holiness of Tears
We have been taught, quietly and persistently, that tears are something to move through on the way to something better. What if they are not the waiting room? What if they are, sometimes, the sanctuary itself?
While He Was Still a Long Way Off
The father in the parable does not appear to be doing anything when the son returns. But the text suggests he has been watching the road for a long time. There is something to be said about what that watching costs — and what it means.
God Is Not Late
The hardest thing about waiting is not the length of it. It is the silence that comes with it — the feeling that the waiting means something about you, or about whether God is still there.
The Contract You Never Signed
Most of us were never handed the terms explicitly. We absorbed them slowly, in Sunday school and sermon illustrations and the quiet pressure of being around people who seemed to have it together. The contract felt real. The problem is that God never signed it.
The Skin Does Not Grow Back the Same
A doctor once told me that when the body heals a deep wound, it does not replace the original tissue. It produces something new. That observation changed the way I understand what God is doing in a wounded life.
The Room You Could Not Walk Back Into
For some believers, the hardest thing is not losing faith in God — it is losing faith in the place where they learned to find him. This is not an argument against the church. It is a word of grace for the long road back.
While You Were Waiting
Waiting is not the pause before your life resumes. For the wounded believer, it is often the place where the most important things quietly happen — whether you notice them or not.
