TOPIC INDEXLove of Neighbor (34)

  1. Meeting Jesus at Mile Twenty

    book
    01/19/16
    8 mins
    By Chad Bird
    They may also be fellow sufferers who’ve hit their own bottom with you. Whoever they are, they wear the mask of Jesus the crucified. In them and through them the Lord is at work to love you.

  2. Honest Parenting: Tell Children the "Dreadful Beauty" of Painful Truths

    book
    09/15/14
    7 mins
    By Chad Bird
    My daughter’s honest, pointed question of “Why?” not only desired an answer; it deserved and demanded the “dreadful beauty” of an honest response.

  3. The Polygamous, Incestuous, Murderous Collection of Screw-ups God Called the Holy Family

    book
    09/11/14
    10 mins
    By Chad Bird
    The pains and disappointments in life are teaching you the hard truth that God has a warm place in His heart for happy families.

  4. "You Can Get Used to Damn Near Any Stink": Acclimating to Evil

    book
    09/03/14
    7 mins
    By Chad Bird
    Have you ever found yourself looking back on a time in your life when you were thoroughly enmeshed in something wrong, and now you hardly recognize the person you were then?

  5. A Tattooed Angel

    book
    08/11/14
    6 mins
    By Chad Bird
    By the time we pulled off the side of the road, they had spilled out and surrounded our vehicle.

  6. The Phone Number that Could Tell My Life's Story: A Mother's Day Reflection

    book
    05/07/14
    7 mins
    By Chad Bird
    Perhaps a phone number seems an odd thing to get sentimental about, but I can’t help myself. You see, if that number, and the phone connected to it, could speak, they would tell my life’s story.

  7. God Has a Mom

    book
    03/25/14
    8 mins
    By Chad Bird
    It all started when out of the nothingness of Mary’s womb, the Word who makes all things, made for Himself a body, human through and through. From the virgin soil of Eden the first man came and from the virgin womb the last man came—came to re-genesis you.

  8. The Small Huge Gift: A Remembrance of Ken Korby

    book
    03/11/14
    8 mins
    By Chad Bird
    Though I had studied four prior years at that institution, the one course I had with him shaped my pastoral care more than any other. Ken Korby was this pastor’s name, and when I grew up, I wanted to be just like him.

  9. Waking up with Leah: Learning to Love a Disappointing Church

    book
    10/22/13
    15 mins
    By Chad Bird
    Like the patriarch, Jacob, who after his wedding night, awoke to the wrong wife in his bed, I too one day opened my eyes to find that the Rachel with whom I had fallen in love, for whom I'd labored long years, was not the one beside me as the sun rose.

  10. Visiting the Dead at Christmas: The Fight to Forgive Family

    book
    01/05/13
    9 mins
    By Chad Bird
    People take off their public masks when around relatives. They let their darkness shine. That’s why Manuel spends his December 25 in the graveyard, talking to the dead.