I watched Thor: Love and Thunder last week with my daughter. The soundtrack is excellent–a lot of Guns N’ Roses songs! An underlying theme of the movie is that most gods don’t care about their worshippers and are hiding away from the suffering of this world. In my favorite show, Ted Lasso, there’s a scene in which one coach tells another he wants to pray. Ted asks, “But for what and to which God?” Both of these stories get at our underlying wrestle: Is God hiding? Can God be known? Does God care?

Easter is the historical event that answers these questions with a resounding yes! Jesus’ death and resurrection tell us that God cares, can be known, and is known for resurrection…

Jesus triumphantly enters Jerusalem on the back of a donkey with swarms of people declaring, “Hosanna in the highest!” A celebration of a leader they thought to be from God. Despite the fanfare and fulfillment of prophecy, Jesus’ entry signals the dawning of a kingdom marked by humility and peace…

Some weeks, the death and injustice of life feels closer than others. This past week I spoke with person after person who was searching for answers. Each of us will experience tragedy and injustice at some point in our life, even though we might like to pretend we won’t. Two common responses I hear variations of are, everything happens for a reason or evil is evidence that there is no God. I believe these are both inadequate and hopeless. If everything happens for a reason then we are trying to make everything mean something and end up trying to make something bad good. This is unnecessary and horribly unhelpful. On the other hand, if there is no God then this world just is was it is. There’s no such thing as eternal goodness and love. It’s hopeless and our best bet is to accept our fate…

Us human beings like to be right. But what does it get us? Unfortunately, our commitment to being right often leads to broken relationships, a closed perspective, and missed opportunities for growth. We may have proved our point or held onto our principle but lost something more valuable as a result. Since none of us are always right, the more we proclaim to be right the more we are ensuring we’re wrong. During this season of Lent, we want to release our right to be right so that we might grow in love for God and others. To help do this, we want to resist arrogance, confess need, and look deeper at the world around us…

In my business life, I help leaders build great culture within their organization. One aspect of my work is to coach people in their relational skills. Change is hard, but it can be done. One of the key ingredients is someone’s ability to repent. We can’t go in a new direction until we recognize our need to change. Repentance can’t be faked. You can go through the motions, but it won’t result in lasting change. On the other hand, repentance can be forgotten. Humanity has a great capacity to forget or become foggy about our need to change. This is why the season of Lent is so helpful–it is an annual time for repentance and renewal…

Families, teams, organizations, and churches all flourish when united and falter when divided. Unity is a difference-maker but always difficult to maintain. Unfortunately, we trend and are tempted toward division. Paul, one of the early leaders of the church, understood the importance of unity and wrote to the church of Corinth to admonish them to fight the temptation of division. Paul’s challenge is to resist us versus them quarreling, remember the goal is love, and act like a building…

You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. (Matthew 5:13-14)

What do salt, light, and a city all have in common? Their purpose is to serve. Salt highlights the flavor of what it’s on. Think of a ripe tomato with some good flaky salt sprinkled on it; it’s even better! Light is used to illuminate the dark, not to be what is seen. A city is a place that hosts and facilitates the life of a community. Each of these is valuable, but at their best when serving a greater purpose. This is God’s vision for the church and humanity, that they would find their fullness in being for the good of the world…

Recently, my wife and I were waiting to get seats for our daughter’s concert. Access was set up Black Friday style, in which everyone waits outside the doors and then rushes in all at once to get their seat. I was doing a good job blocking and tackling as we made our way to the targeted section. As we got near the ideal seats, my wife asked where we should sit. I quickly responded that it was her call and a woman near us told me I was a wise man..

In the book Switch, Dan & Chip Heath share an experiment demonstrating the significance of a clear path for shaping human behavior. After surveying a dorm of about one hundred people, they discovered those who were generous and those who were stingy…

The season of Epiphany within the church calendar is one in which Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is revealed–it’s sort of an ah-ha moment. Jesus offers all of us clarity by giving us the ability to see God, a story to live in, and a community to live through…

Being human is confounding. We have a range of experiences that encompass delight, wonder, boredom, fear, and pain, to name a few. We are capable of new adventures and change while also being vulnerable and prone to stagnation. We experience this variety on a daily and weekly basis. Being human is incredible, but we often feel incomplete, as though something is missing. God answers our incompleteness by becoming human and bringing restoration through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus’ humanity brings wholeness to all humanity…

I think Love Actually is a quality Christmas movie. I appreciate that each character has to persevere in choosing love, and of course, that is more clumsy than flawless. Love is easily recognized as the greatest of human experiences. To be fully known and fully loved is what we all crave. Yet, to be loving is something we can forever aspire to but never fully attain…

Joy is sometimes hard to come by. We all desire it, but our negativity bias and accumulated disappointments over the years decrease our capacity for joy. Our tendency is to notice negative data more than positive. We allow negative events and outcomes to have a more significant impact on our lives than positive ones - that is our negativity bias…

I passed a sign recently that said, “No God, No Peace. Know God, Know Peace.” It’s cute, but I wondered how many people might feel as though they know God but still don’t know peace. My bet is quite a few.

Welcome to Advent; please hold. It is a season much like life in which we are asked to wrestle and wait for arrival. Much of American life eliminates or reduces waiting. We can buy with one click and have it instantly or within two days. We hate waiting, but we are all waiting for something– a new job, a child, our fortune to change, a health diagnosis to improve. Waiting is hard because we feel the tension between what is and what we wish was. This tension churns up difficult emotions such as discouragement. Perhaps, you feel discouraged this week. There’s plenty in this life that would trigger that for you.

Our cultural values, the marketing we consume, and the systems we operate reveal a world in which power, competition, and individual interest reign supreme. This is the opposite of the order that James believes is healthy based upon what has been revealed by the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. James thinks the church should aspire to be a connected community that values humility, care, and unity. James wraps his letter by offering three strategies to cultivate this type of community: wait together; pray one for all and all for one; look out for each other.

Jesus holds up the virtue of humility as the authentic way of being human. Jesus teaches us practically by saying don’t sit at the seat of honor when you are invited to a party. If it’s not for you, that will be embarrassing. But if it is, they will ask you to it, and all will see (Luke 14). Jesus also instructs that humility opens our eyes to God, whether approaching the Kingdom like little children or recognizing our need like the tax collector and not the pharisee in Luke 18. Beyond teaching humility, Jesus models humility, “but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross (Phil. 2:7-8, NRSV).”

“The place is like a museum. It's very beautiful and very cold, and you're not allowed to touch anything,” says Ferris Buehler about his friend Cameron’s house. This museum of a house contains a red 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California that Ferris has determined needs to be taken out for the day, despite Cameron’s protest that his dad loves that car more than life itself. To which Ferris responds by saying, “A man with priorities so far out of whack doesn’t deserve such a fine automobile.” This is exactly how James feels about faith and works. When we don’t serve others in love, it’s like leaving the Ferrari in the garage because just as Ferraris are meant to be driven, faith is meant to be lived…

When the communities we live in – family, work, school, neighborhood – are healthy, it is a game changer for everyone within them. James, writing to the early church, knows this and is upset to hear that they are showing favoritism to the rich rather than building a healthy church community. Our challenges might differ from theirs, but the community-building principles will serve us well..

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. (James 3:5b-6a)

Words can tear down, incite, disrespect, spread lies, and divide. Because of this, James tells the early church to bridle their tongues. My mom used to bridle my tongue by putting Tabasco on it when I talked back. It happened a lot which is why I think I like spicy food so much. I was a slow learner.