Christmas Amid the Rubble

I've recently realized that the last thing I put on this blog was a melancholy reflection on Christmas. Now, I'd like to put before you this Advent a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer: Sitting in prison on the first Sunday of Advent 1943, German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: November 28, 1943 My dear Parents, Although no …

Merry Weary Christmas

I'm weary this Christmas. Maybe you are, too. I'm weary of all the decisions I've had to make this year, figuring out how to navigate the pandemic, deciding on my own risk tolerance, trying to balance that with other people's. I can only imagine what kind of weariness government officials and church leaders are feeling …

Transcendence on the Metro (Essay at Fathom)

Last month, I had an essay published at Fathom Magazine for their “Transcendence” issue. It tells the story of an even that I initially thought was a coincidence, then came to conclude was a miracle. Here is how it begins: I decided, too late, that I wanted to go home. It was a cool fall …

Anybody Can Write a Christian Romance Novel

A while back, a friend and I were joking about cowriting a Christian romance novel centered around meeting someone via Craigslist (or some similar buying/selling platform). It didn't come to fruition. But before it fizzled out, I wrote a first chapter. So now I present to you chapter 1 of Secondhand Love. I am accepting …

“The Empty Calendar” Essay at Fathom

I wrote an essay about how I have struggled with loneliness during this past year, and how I have attempted to push through that loneliness into solitude. I wanted to see if I could put words to my experience in a way that connected with what so many others are experiencing during the pandemic. The …

C.S. Lewis on Worrying about What’s Distant

I was alerted recently to this quote from a letter by C. S. Lewis to Dom Bede Griffiths from December 20, 1946: It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for …

A Prayer in Solitude

Since I accidentally pushed out a blank blog post yesterday to all who subscribe (oops!), I wanted to write something a little more substantive today to make it up to all of you. I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s book Thoughts in Solitude in an attempt to learn as much as I can about how to …

Sitting with Our Neighbors

We divide ourselves so many times into so many categories that we lose sight of what is more important, loving our neighbor as ourselves. Rather than go over to the rock of someone that is different we tend to stay in our groups with people that are like us losing opportunities to share in their …

The Great Terrible Thing

The Pacific Northwest has a reputation for getting a lot of rain, but volume-wise it doesn’t rain that much more here than a lot of other places. It’s just that the rain is spread out over so many dark, cloudy days during the fall … and the winter … and the spring … and the …

Worthy Conduct (Phil 1:27–2:4)

I preached this sermon on June 28, 2020, at Bellingham Covenant Church. There’s a famous quote from Martin Luther King that says 11 a.m. on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. It’s still a famous quote because, even though he said it in the ‘60s and official segregation ended a long time …