Transitions can be hard, especially those that aren’t expected. But even for the ones we long for, there are still lessons to learn, emotions to sort out and most of all, places where we can meet with the Lord. I had always wanted to be married. In my mid 20s,
I had been crying loudly for 15 minutes. My wife was laying peacefully and mostly non-responsive in bed next to me. Cancer had been taking her life for over a year and she was days away from breathing her last breath at age 38. I was at the end of
With our belongings loaded onto a ship for the journey back to the U.S., I find myself sitting among the dust bunnies on the floor of our vacant Tokyo home, pondering the significance of the past 24 beautiful and complicated years. The farewells are over, our missionary roles are finished,
As soon as you hear the word transition or change, I’m sure a range of images, experiences, life stages, and emotions occur. As they signal the end of one thing and the beginning of something else, transitions also include a threshold: the “space between” that incorporates the ending of the
I can’t help but notice that a spirit of argument and polarization seems to have taken over our world. Maybe it feels collectively harder to handle conflict because we’re tired out from the pandemic and wary of political drama, but differences of opinion have existed since the beginning of humankind.
SEEK TO UNDERSTAND BEFORE BEING UNDERSTOOD The first thing most missionaries learn is the mantra, “Different isn’t wrong, it’s just different.” In situations where we don’t understand others’ actions, it can be helpful to look at the ways Jesus related to people and the types of questions He asked them—He
How do we know what we know? How do we determine our position, or what we believe, on various issues? We all combine different sources of knowledge in different ways, resulting in a highly personalized position mixtape. The four sources of knowledge are Scripture, personal experience, reason, and tradition. How
“Pastor, I don’t know what to think. A loving God can’t possibly think this about me, can He?” The voice on the recording belonged to a young woman who described herself as bisexual (attracted to men and women). She had been building trust with our community over the last few
For years, and I’m ashamed of this, I was the guy in the room thinking, “Oh man, not another emotional staff mess to deal with.” I was 38 years old and just as stressed out and tired as anyone else (that seemed to be a pre-req for EDGE Corps at
When I was a young father, my wife Cathy, and I moved from our settled hometown to our dream counseling graduate program in Denver. We felt thrilled and in the center of God’s will. However, our then 10-year-old son, Seth, was struggling. His loneliness, isolation, and new school left him
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