Theology Over Thrice Rewarmed Coffee

I set a goal in my calendar to write a blog post. Two weeks ago. So I should hold myself accountable and write something. But I don't really know what. I suppose I will simply share what the Lord has been teaching me lately. 1) I am learning that God can use dysfunction to challenge and grow me. I am responsible to my reactions and attitudes within my circumstances. I can't always change them, but I can let God change me in them. He won't put me in a perfect, holy place in a fallen world, safe from drama, frustration, and ineptitude. He will expect me (and enable me) to become holy within the places of drama, frustration, and ineptitude. 2) I am learning that I am so much weaker than I realize. When I look at what Christians (and those of other faiths) are experiencing in other parts of the world, I have panic attacks. I can't handle the thought of going through so much pain. My anxiety disorder makes me extra sensitive to such thoughts. I think I'm this toug...

Genesis 2:4-7 (NLT) 4  This is the account of the creation of the heavens and the earth. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, 5  neither wild plants nor grains were growing on the earth. For the Lord God had not yet sent rain to water the earth, and there were no people to cultivate the soil. 6  Instead, springs came up from the ground and watered all the land. 7  Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. Crafted not by divine words but by divine hands. Fingerprints of God over every inch of human flesh. Unique in creation and set on top. The zenith. The pinnacle. The cherry on the sundae. The icing on the cake. Special. Set apart. Made by God with his own self in mind. Yet made of mud. Fashioned from dust. Not from precious stones or from angel hairs or from clouds or from gold. Man from dirt, woman from man. A cl...

Social media makes many of us prey to its powers of making us feel important. I fall into this myself, but rest assured that 90% of my posting of minutiae is meant to be ironic. Take, for example, my recent Instagram post of my bowl of oatmeal. Let's not talk about the fact that it took me 20 minutes to figure out how to get that Instagram picture on my blog. Okay? Okay. Anyway, during my time on social media for the seminary, last week I saw an incredible number of posts, articles, tweets, and the like that were questioning the idea of people giving things up for Lent OR questioning what they were giving up. The overarching trends were along the lines of "You shouldn't give up such a puny little thing for Jesus when 21 guys just got their heads cut off for him," "You shouldn't give stuff up for Lent because you're doing it for the wrong reasons ," and, my personal favorite, "Lent should be about taking on something instead of givin...