We can bring our troubles, griefs, sorrows, and sins to Jesus, who meets us smack dab in the middle of our messy mob.
Confession isn’t a detour in the liturgy. It’s the doorway.
American religion did not become optional because the gospel failed. It became optional because religion slowly redefined itself around usefulness.

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Thankfully, our heavenly Father sent a Champion into the game to take our place. What we failed to do, He accomplished.
I looked up at the cross and saw what God had become to bring me home. He had become what I was.
It doesn’t matter how good you seem to be, you’ll always be able to find someone who seems better than you. We’re addicted to comparing, measuring, quantifying, and judging.
This was one of the most haunting and soul tormenting verses in the Bible for me when I was growing up.
One of my podcast addictions is Criminal. Their tagline is “Criminal is a podcast about crime. Stories of people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle.”
What is most amazing to me is not that Jesus welcomed public transgressors into his company. What astounds me is that they came to him with the full expectation of not being turned away.
Jesus tells the story of a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who falls into the hands of robbers. The text reads, “They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.”
The task—the joyful task!—of the interpreter is to go around the house, trying various keys in various doors, until they are all opened. This is one way to picture our reading of the Bible.
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” These are the words of Jesus to a man who promised to follow him after saying good-bye to his family in Luke 9:62. Tough stuff.
From creator to priest, our God now moves, from forming animals to slaying them, all so that His Adam and His Eve might remain truly His.
“You shall have no other gods,” God says, and we, spurred on by the prohibition, roll up our sleeves and get to work fashioning gods like there’s no tomorrow.
As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.