Healing God, Healing Earth
At every point of my day, plants or their derivatives are working in my life to help me, heal me, and bring me joy.
At every point of my day, plants or their derivatives are working in my life to help me, heal me, and bring me joy.
Three hours outside and peace returned and my spirit felt settled.
When we grieve, we feel what we have lost, but we don’t have all the information on this side of death.
These generations are seeking love and, therefore, they are the perfect candidates for Jesus’s circle of fellowship.
We should learn the power of speaking hope into ourselves.
Stories have been an escape and an invitation to a new world. They have given and continue to give me a break from my own mind.
Realizing he still had a purpose to serve, he is able to look towards the future, if not with hope, then with determination.
We are meant to live in small communities and family units where we are loved and where we can feel a sense of belonging.
The focus of our hope is not a limited man who is trying to be more, but an unlimited God who has already balanced the scales of justice.
Discernment means investing in that which brings life and hope, even if we won’t see the fruit of it any time soon.
I can clearly see how the failures of others have made me doubt my ability to be loved and God’s ability to both protect me and accept me.
When we enjoy the gifts God has made available to us, we join in worship with creation.
The God who was God during every life-altering time period in history is still God now.
We are no longer looking out for our neighbors unless they agree with us.
We can find ourselves in these characters, particularly in regard to our relationship with the church.
Jesus’s words, like Maribel’s to her family, are a reminder that I’m not meant to handle it all myself.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the need in our world, to doubt even that God is actively at work.
The best way to wield power is to share it. Even Jesus did this with his disciples.
The process of grieving has us asking many questions. The most obvious is why.
God has the words of life that set my heart aflame and give me hope when I give up on myself.
Eve, and every one of us, struggle to wait for things to unfold according to God’s plan.
I have found, like my sweet DJ, to bask in my daily routine and to find in it my dwelling place.
We have to go back to our hardest memories, those moments when we decided life truths and speak the Gospel to them.
Seeing doesn’t mean fame (which doesn’t satisfy as much as it promises) but seeing means belonging. It means community and support, not necessarily financially but emotionally.
Those who love well are on the path to healing.
While I would hardly consider myself a person of prodigious talent like the character Lazarov, I too have something unique to offer the world which is more than my progeny and support.
Instead of protecting me from my worst fear of worthlessness, God has pressed in, forcing me to face him as that vulnerable little girl who wants to please.
I realize I have a tendency to go to physical items to find God, which I don’t think is wholly bad given that physical reality is God’s handiwork. He often uses the physical as a doorway to the unseeable heart of God.
It wasn’t until I read the novella, Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang—which inspired a blockbuster film, Arrival—that I began to understand things.
Love, of course, is the answer, but, surprisingly, it is not the love of the parent, or even a human, that saves the day.
The audience cares about their heroes—evidenced by the emotions expressed by the deaths in Avengers: Infinity War.
If the fruit of our lives is what gives us value, it is no wonder many are disillusioned with the idea of inherent human value.
When we think of love, we don’t often picture the pain that love causes. Without love, death would not hurt.
Each hero carries the weight of failure individually–Iron Man feels guilt about his young protege, Spider-Man; Thor regrets not using a more killing blow.
I am no better or stronger than anyone else. You cannot be involved in the ministry of reconciliation from a position of superiority. It is impossible.
The disciples were lost, but now, having found Christ, they know their new purpose. They were to create a family and celebrate it.
How difficult those many long years of waiting for the prodigal son to return must have been for the father, though the actual transformation only took a moment.
How can he be forgiven for the abduction and horrific murders of young girls? He is beyond saving. This story, in many ways, follows the narrative of another troubled man found in Luke 8.
Stranger Things Season 3 burst forth with the energy of a firecracker, unrolling one of the show’s most terrifying seasons. *Spoilers ahead*
The danger of our modern, evangelical movement is that we’ve created an answer that is too slick and simplistic for real life—we’ve left no room for dealing with hard questions.
When we are caught in destructive patterns, we might wish we could start over. We can’t do that literally. However, maybe we can do it figuratively.
As culture has continued down the path of rejecting Christianity and God, we have now, once again, seen the re-emergence of the superheroes.
We know of the work done on the Cross— the war has been won! Yet why is the process of being made whole so difficult?
What do we learn about community from the movie The Circle starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson? The church can do it better!
We cannot clearly exonerate or judge ourselves; we can only follow hard after Christ and keep asking ourselves the hard questions.
The hope we have doesn’t mean we always break free of the coping mechanisms—the hope is that one day, we won’t need them.
The fact is that I’m grateful for my charismatic beginnings. If not for the very realness and nearness of the God Benny Hinn described in his testimonial book Good Morning, Holy Spirit, I don’t know if I would have ever taken steps of faith.