Archives For Jesus

I usually heard Beth before I saw her, her pixie voice bouncing down the hall, and I would be glad that she was assigned to our end of the ICU. Before long, her blonde head would pop around the corner. She’d rummage through the fridge looking for IV Zosyn and scatter bits of sunshine around the nursing station.
 
She was half the size of most of her patients, especially the burn victims who were swollen and covered from head to foot in gauze, but she boosted, turned, and slathered them in Silvadene just a quickly as anyone. Beth’s real gift, though, as burn trauma nurse, was making friends with family members, adding lightness and warmth to the stark rooms where their loved ones hung in a balance between life and death. 
 
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But now, Beth is gone. She was young and full of life and her departure was too soon. She had years of love left to give her kids and hundreds of patients left to care for. The sadness I’ve felt since hearing the news has left me thinking about what lies beyond this world.
 
Heaven gets a lot of misleading press–all that business about sitting on clouds and playing harps. Thankfully, that’s not how the Bible describes it. Beth would be bored with that; I know I would. She’d be itching to do something meaningful, to make someone’s day. Instead, the real Heaven will have skyscrapers of gold and a dinner party that will blow the socks off every five star restaurants in history. It will be populated by nations and kings, which means there will be culture, politics, and jobs, but without anything evil, painful, or sad Continue Reading…

Do you ever feel like your life is stuck on mile 20 of a marathon? You just want to crumple on the asphalt and take a nap, but the mountain of Xray reports (or diapers or bills) refuses to budge. So, you push yourself on for another week, only to find yourself still at mile 20 and the finish line nowhere in sight. 

 

Life is busy for everyone I know, and for most of us it’s hard too. In different ways and for different reasons, we find ourselves in the middle of a marathon, physically or emotionally tired, spiritually drained as we sprint past Jesus to meet the next deadline or never-ending-day of mind-numbing sameness. Sometimes, we sense Jesus running alongside, offering us gatorade and telling us to pace ourselves, but we’ve been running for a long time and we’re exhausted. Maybe it’s time for a rest. 

 

Converse fieldsPhoto courtesy of Ilham Rahmansyah via unsplash.com

 

God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. This is one of the first things the Bible teaches us about God, the God in whose image we’re made. But, we don’t have time to rest like God, we’ve got too much to do. This intoxication with busyness, though, wasn’t always the norm for God’s people Continue Reading…

I don’t fit the Christian norm. I’m thirty-four, single, and working on my fourth degree. Not exactly a Proverbs 31 woman. Life took a different route than I’d planned and sometimes, especially in Christian circles, I feel out of place. I’m not the only one, though. I have a gay friend who’s chosen celibacy and two others who’ve opted for heterosexual marriage. Then there’s the single mom, the childless couple, and the guy who’s unemployed. 

 

Most conservative churches have a definition of “normal” that my friends and I can’t live up it up. It can leave us feeling confused and isolated, because most of us didn’t choose our unorthodox demographics, we just found our lives playing out on the single, gay, childless, artistic, or job-wandering stage.

 

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So, how do we navigate life in the church when we don’t quite fit in? During the last decade, I discovered four secrets to thriving in the church even when I’m misunderstood Continue Reading…

America has body-image issues — everyone knows that. But, when, I complained once to my boyfriend-at-the-time about the pressure on women to be beautiful, sexy, and the size of a Starbuck’s straw, he responded that men feel pressure, too. Since women now earn PhDs, make six figures, and head into their thirties both single and respected, it’s not enough for Mr. Darcy to be rich. He also needs a six-pack and a full head of hair.

 

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According to research, my boyfriend was right. Men claim nearly one in four cases of anorexia and bulimia. Pop culture also testifies to the growing number of men concerned about their bodies—from actor Jamie Dorian, of Fifty Shades of Grey, who admits to having “massive hang-ups” about his body to last spring’s media flurry over the virtues of having a dad-bod.

 

So, while Dove®, BuzzFeed, and MTV tackle the body-image epidemic in our country, I keep wondering when Christians will pipe in. Our story, after all, affirms the goodness of the human body from beginning to end. Consider any of the Bible’s climaxes—creation, incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, or Jesus’ future return. God’s best work plays out through the human body Continue Reading…

* This post is from guest blogger, Jed Ostoich, who writes at The Narrator.

 

I have a long history of working in food service. I started saving money for college by working two jobs in high school. Right after the last bell, I’d drive thirty minutes to an engineering firm where I’d draw lighting and HVAC schematics until five, and then I’d hop over to the nearby Subway to work the closing shift.

 

By the time I hit college, I swore I’d never work in food service again. Less than a month into my freshman year, I found myself getting up at four in the morning to get several gallons of coffee brewing for a faculty meeting, pulling out table settings for a lunch the college President was hosting, and folding napkins.

 

Lots of folding napkins.

 

Photo 1443641998979 d59cfcf800c4Photo courtesy of Caspar Rubin via unsplash.com

 

I spent all four years of college working as a caterer with the campus food service staff. The moment I graduated, I swore another oath never to work in food service again. Then I got married, moved to Texas, and started looking for a job to pay the way through seminary.

 

I only found one—in food service Continue Reading…

This piece of flash fiction first ran in Warden Magazine, February 2016.


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Drops of rain gather on the sill, like peasants on a feast day, then tumble down the wall. The rivulets remind me of things long ago—the tall Scots pines at the river where Mamm used to scrub our clothes, the maidens’ ribbons at Beltane festival.

 

I watch the trickle find the ground and then trace its way along the wall towards the shadow in the corner. Slowly, a faint aroma, but rich and earthy, mingles with the familiar dank of stone and clay. Perhaps tomorrow, before Eucharist, the clouds will tire of our burgh and allow the sun to illume the greenness of that clump of moss.

 

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A shock of light outlines the window with its overhanging sign. When they asked me what to etch on it, I said “His Alone.”

 

Two years now I have spent behind these walls—these soldiers of my soul. They bind my body to this square of dirt, away from the plague of gluttony, the temptation of the minstrel’s song, and the lesser loves of ploughmen and bairns. I refuse to be this world’s chattle, harnessed to it like a ploughing ox. No, I will soar, like the goshawks in the sky beyond my window Continue Reading…

When I first saw The Tortured Christby Brazilian sculptor Guido Rocha, it didn’t ask my permission, it just went ahead and seared itself into my subconscious. Every couple of months since then, The Tortured Christ pops up, uninvited. All of the sudden he’s there, blood splattering on the carpet of my brain and his screams ricocheting off the walls. It’s rather uncomfortable. 


I’d prefer a visit from the placid Jesus–the one who’s taking his torture like a champ, the Jesus that dangles on the end of necklaces, Jesus-asleep-on-the-cross. But, this Jesus keeps showing up–skin retracting between his ribs, muscles seizing in agony–and, honestly, when he stops by, I don’t start humming worship songs or try to gaze deeply into his eyes. I want to look away.

 

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The truth is, there’s a lot of things I’d rather look away from–not just Rocha’s Christ–11.4 million Syrians who have been displaced from their homes. Four and half million of them eke out an existence on the border of other countries, without heat in the winter or basic health care, relying on UN food coupons to keep them just beyond the grip of starvation.   

 

I’d rather not notice the man who holds a plastic cup at the intersection several blocks from my house. It gets complicated to think about the addictions that might be driving him to the streets, the shattered family he represents, or the burden of what it means for me to get involved Continue Reading…

I don’t really like confessing my sins. It’s a lot like going to the dentist, which I didn’t mind until last October. I sat in the exam chair, looking up at the X-rays and trying to process what my dentist was saying. Not me, I thought, not after thirty-two years. The tiny spot on the X-ray, though, refused to illuminate. My dental sins had found my out. After years of not flossing, I had a cavity. 

 

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The problem with confessing is that it requires us to face the decay inside. A pearly exterior doesn’t matter—how often we go to church or the amount of our charitable donations. Confession, like X-rays, looks for the evil rotting beneath the surface. 

 

Maybe we read our Bible several mornings a week and feel pretty “spiritual,” but that’s like showing up to God’s Dental with two rows of shiny teeth. He’s more concerned with what’s under the enamel. His radiographs might find that we’re rolling out of bed, not to hear from the God we love, but to manipulate him—we give up twenty minutes of our time and expect him, in return, to answer our prayers. Our devotions, held up to his light-box, might actually reveal self-centeredness Continue Reading…

“Sir?” 

 

A woman’s voice ricochets inside his head. 

 

“Sir?”

 

He follows the line of chairs to the pamphlets, mounted on the wall, and the window beyond. A woman sits behind it, with the glass pane slid open, and points toward a young man who is taking off his headphones.

 

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Tires peel behind him and he works his neck around as far as it will go. A green car speeds across the parking lot and into the morning sun.

 

Sunlight.

 

He reaches to scratch his calf Continue Reading…

“God, I just don’t have what it takes,” I blurted out and grabbed a sweater off the hanger.

The sound of my voice surprised me. I usually slog through mornings mute and zombi-like, but standing between the doors of my closet I felt trapped by my inadequacy—to deal with the politics at work, difficult patients, and another ten-hour day. Even worse, I was completely out of ideas—and had been for weeks—about how to connect my coworkers to the God who loves them. 

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My inadequacy twisted around me, squeezing the air out of my lungs. But, as my words scattered onto work pants and blouses, I felt an answer—the kind you’d never think of on your own, the kind that feels green when all your thoughts are purple. The answer was colored like this: “You being adequate was never the point. Not at the beginning, and not now.”

Just like that, God torched one of the portraits of him that I’d been hoarding. It’s a picture of God up in heaven. Sometimes he’s cheering me on. Other times he’s drumming his fingers on the throne. Always he’s waiting for my graduation day—the day when I’ll finally master being a Christian and get everything right. On my own. Without his help Continue Reading…