1. “Come join the murder,” the black ravens of his heart cried. “Come join it again, old friend.” And so he did. The prodigal relapsed. Re-sinned. Re-destroyed his life. Would his father welcome him home this time?
  2. We are talking about the abundance of forgiveness today, with special guests, Daniel Emery Price, and Erick Sorensen from the "30 Minutes in the New Testament" podcast.
  3. Fourteen years ago, drowning in the muck of dark despair, in the middle of a life gone terribly wrong, I wrote in my journal, "I wonder how, once this is all over, how I’ll be, how I’ll turn out…” Now I know.
  4. We cannot scan any random passage of Scripture and automatically assume the words are unconditionally addressed to us. Often, very often, they are not.
  5. As the church gathers in worship, however, different words reverberate in readings, hymns, and homilies. These words beckon us to get dirty.
  6. Thank God for heroes: they inspire us to be better, to help others, to live and work for the good of our race. And thank God for villains, too: they incarnate our shadow side, our nocturnal soul, the dragon within us that must incessantly have its throat slit on the altar of repentance.
  7. The Christian sees himself or herself as one just as guilty as the rest of the world. But we see ourselves not just as what’s wrong with the world, but in the One by whom the world has been redeemed.
  8. Don’t say you’re beyond hope, for there is not one beyond God. Don’t say you’ve done too much evil, for there is no wrong bigger than God’s heart of forgiveness.
  9. Allegations (and in some cases, admissions) of adultery, addiction, and various forms of abuse have rocked worlds, shattered lives, broken hearts, ended marriages, and split churches. Each case is distinct, but all of them are tragic, scandalous, and destructive in one way, shape, or form.
  10. When we imagine we’re living an evil-shunning, virtue-practicing, morally superior Christian life, the problem is not that our halos are too small, but that our heads are too big.
  11. The following excerpt comes from Chapter 7, “When Love Repents Us,” in Chad Bird’s new book, Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul.
Loading...

No More Post

No more pages to load