I often stare into the flashing lights of my radio station control board wondering if anybody is actually listening. With the busy nature of everyone’s lives amidst a raging pandemic, I imagine the number is quite low. So you can imagine my delight when I received a letter from a self-proclaimed “long-time listener” personally addressed […]
Rewriting the Narrative of Shame
What is shame? A small voice whispers, “something is wrong with you; you should be better; you should have it all together.” Many of us have heard this whisper of insufficiency whether it concerns our appearance, emotions, or behavior. At the core of these whispers, there are lies that tell us we are unworthy of […]
Busyness: Where Thoreau and the Bible Meet
American society extols the virtues of being busy. Busyness has now become a status symbol, to the extent that people grant higher status to those who use items such as bluetooth headsets (linked to multitasking) instead of headphones (associated with leisure).1 Whereas certain cultures and historical eras valued leisure time as a signal of wealth […]
Portraits from the Past
Introduction “It is not good that the man should be alone.”1 These are among the first words in the entire Bible; it is on this basis that God created Eve – so that man would not live alone, but that he might be fruitful and multiply, creating society. But the past year has seen an […]
Finding Wholeness in Loneliness
What is loneliness? “Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.”1 The pain of loneliness is something we all feel at some time. Most of us try to subdue it, masking over our hurt with pretenses of happiness and artificial satisfaction and crowding our lives with hundreds of distractions. […]
Is God Silent on the Suffering of COVID-19?
Within the Christian tradition, the believer’s petition to God captures a promise: Ask, and it will be given to you. This pattern of call-and-response reverberates across Scripture, one of the basest chords upon which the entire harmony between God and man is built. The enslaved in Egypt, the blind man in the temple, the disciples […]