What We Lost When Meekness Became Weakness
Meekness isn’t weakness. It’s strength under control. A powerful horse trained to obey its rider isn’t diminished; it’s directed. In the same way, true meekness means mastering anger rather than being mastered by it. Our culture often celebrates force and reaction, but the quiet discipline of restraint — the power to choose patience over impulse — may be one of the most overlooked virtues we need most.
Does God Get Back Pain? On the Image of God
If we’re made in God’s image, what exactly does that mean? Surely not that God shares our crow’s feet or back pain. The likeness runs deeper. We create, feel, reason and reflect — echoes of the Creator’s own life. Yet every answer leads us toward mystery. We resemble God enough to recognize him, but not enough to contain him. The image is real, but the One it reflects is far greater.
When Faith Disappears, Idols Return: Santayana’s Warning To The Modern World
George Santayana wasn’t a traditional believer, yet he saw something many modern critics miss: when faith disappears, the human need for meaning doesn’t. It simply relocates. Remove religion, and politics, identity or ideology rush in to take its place — with the same rituals and moral fervor, but far less mercy. Santayana’s warning was simple and unsettling: societies that abandon transcendence rarely become calmer. They become more combustible.
A Purpose Beyond the Paycheck
Around a fire one night, two entrepreneurs wondered aloud if less ambition would mean less success. But the question isn’t whether we stop striving — it’s what we’re striving for. When our lifestyle requires less, our work can aim higher. Instead of building bigger barns, we’re freed to serve a better Master. Purpose begins to outgrow the paycheck, and ambition finds a deeper home.
The Questions We Outgrow (And Shouldn’t)
We praise childlike faith, but we often forget childlike curiosity. Jesus welcomed children knowing they’d bring questions — honest, unfiltered, sometimes inconvenient ones. Somewhere along the way, we learn to stop asking, to smooth over what doesn’t sit right. But faith grows when we stay curious. The questions we’re tempted to outgrow may be the very ones that keep us awake, attentive and open to deeper truth.
Too Busy for God?
Busyness has a way of crowding out what we say we want most. We’re tired, overextended and surrounded by more than we can manage — yet still thirsty for God. Scripture names that thirst clearly, even when our lives don’t. When our homes and schedules are packed tight, silence becomes scarce. Sometimes the most spiritual move isn’t adding another practice, but removing what keeps us from paying attention.
The Mysteries of Life, Turn and James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’
On cold winter nights, James Joyce’s “The Dead” returns with quiet force. It lingers over an ordinary party before unveiling something devastatingly human: love given too late, lives misunderstood, the living haunted by the dead. In its final snowfall, Joyce dissolves our illusions of permanence and self-importance, reminding us how thin the line is between longing and loss — and how mysteriously we all belong to one another.
The Bible Is an Onion, not a Lemon
Some of us approach the Bible like a lemon — something to squeeze quickly for an easy takeaway. But Scripture is more like an onion: layered, textured, asking for patience. Its message is clear enough for anyone to meet God, yet deep enough to keep drawing us further in. Reading well means slowing down, peeling back assumptions and letting the mystery of God shape us over time.
Da Vinci Is Not Hanging in the Louvre: The Creator/Creature Distinction
It’s tempting to blur God into nature, into ourselves, into everything — until the Creator becomes just another part of creation. But Scripture insists on a difference: God is the artist, we are the art. The mountains are radiant, but they are not God. Holding the Creator-creature distinction protects wonder without collapsing into worship of ourselves or the world. Da Vinci isn’t hanging in the Louvre — and neither is God.
The Year Faith-Based Films Finally Grew Up: The Top 10 Movies Of 2025
In 2025, faith-based movies didn’t just get louder — they got better. The big releases still gave audiences what they came for, but the craft finally started catching up to the subject matter. Meanwhile, Hollywood kept circling religion with fresh seriousness, especially in horror and thrillers. For the first time, this list isn’t about picking the least embarrassing option — it’s about choosing between genuinely good films.
The Story of the Christian Canon
A Baptist buys a Bible without wondering who decided these books belong together. A Catholic opens a hotel Bible and senses something missing. A student discovers extra pages in the “required” Bible for class and panics. Canon questions have been hiding in plain sight. Canon once meant a reed — a measuring stick — and eventually, a standard. The canon is the Church’s straight edge for truth.
Reversing the Explosion: the Big Bang, but Backward
Playing the universe backward, everything rushes toward a beginning it never had to have. Possibility narrows to a single point where nothing should exist — and yet something does.
One Body, Many Parts: What Is a Church?
Somehow God builds a church out of people who’d never choose each other on their own. Corinth was proof of that — sailors and scholars, the devout and the jaded, all learning to live as one body. Paul’s image still holds. A church is less a polished institution than a family gathered around a table, each person wanted, each part needed, every difference woven into something unexpectedly whole.
Anchored in the Eternal: How God Becomes Our Safe Harbor
Peace doesn’t rise from our efforts, or from searching our own hearts for something solid. It comes from knowing the God who has already moved toward us in love. At the cross, we see his heart laid bare — holiness without harshness, sovereignty without distance, justice wrapped in mercy. Let that glimpse of God steady you. Anchor yourself there, where his character becomes your calm.
Everything is Spiritual
The sacred doesn’t start when the music does on Sunday morning; it starts when you wake up, when you breathe, when you create, when you serve.
Storytelling: The Power of Our Testimonies
Every one of us carries a story that only makes sense when seen through God’s eyes. The heartbreaks, failures and long detours — He’s been in all of it, redeeming, reworking, rebuilding. When we tell our stories truthfully, the light gets in. Others see him, not just us. And somehow, our scars start to heal. Because with God, every story turns toward glory.
Church: The Case for & Against Community
We crave freedom from others — until isolation exposes our need for them. The myth of independence tells us we’ll find truth alone, but our souls were made for relationship.
Dreaming Bigger by Asking Better Questions
Good questions are like keys, flashlights, even shovels. They unlock new doors, shine light on hidden places, and unearth treasures buried just beneath the surface. Unlike questioning, which often carries suspicion, true question-asking is about discovery, curiosity and growth. It’s a posture, not a checklist. And when practiced with wisdom, it doesn’t just improve conversations — it reshapes our relationships, our work and the direction of our lives.
What’s ‘Good’? And How Do We Know It?
What makes something “good”? We say things like “sex is dangerous” and “marijuana is evil” — but we rarely stop to ask, What does God call good?
The Cracks That Let In The Light Of God
Some weekends just catch you off guard — not with fireworks, but with God showing up in quiet, unexpected ways. A biker rally. A conversation about grace. A priest who met God on mushrooms. The Spirit moves how he wants, through whoever he wants. None of us sees the whole picture, but sometimes, through the cracks in this world, the light gets in. And that’s enough.