“It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend said perhaps it means that no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor.” This quote by Nicholas Wolterstorff has come back to me as news reports have come out of Israel, each overwhelming and unimaginable in their horror. Images of mourning parents and dust-covered crying children. A fragile peace decimated in a matter of days in one of the most significant holy places on earth. So many innocent lives changed forever on account…

Our Sierra View Bible Study has recently started a study of the book of Hebrews. It is a book that is rarely studied in its entirety. Perhaps this is because it is so dense, with so many references to other Old Testament texts. Perhaps it is because we know so little about its author or intended audience. Or perhaps it is because after the Gospels and Paul’s letters, our attention starts to wane a bit. The first four verses of Hebrews waste no time beginning with royal fanfare. In the original Hebrew, those four verses are one long sentence, beginning with an affirmation that God speaks. We know God, not…

Nothing feels better than being certain about something. In our day-to-day lives we are always looking for “clear cut” and “sure things.” It makes sense then that we would seek the same things in our spiritual lives. To our chagrin, certainty is elusive in the realm of the spiritual. Sometimes our pursuit of certainty gets us into trouble. We use it as a measure of achievement, either feeling guilty about not reaching a certain level of it, or feeling judgmental over those with reservations or doubts. There were certainly people in Jesus’ day who were certain about their faith, but those weren’t the ones Jesus called to walk alongside him.…

For one week every July I leave my chaplain/pastor routine in the Valley for an entirely different experience: Camp Director for our 3rd-12th graders at Camp Keola, situated at 7500 feet at Huntington Lake. In addition to swimming, singing and s’mores, it was a week of fellowship and faith formation shaped around the theme of: “Flipping the Script.” Jesus was not the Messiah the world was anticipating. He was frustratingly non-compliant with the expectations of the world, which values strength over vulnerability, ambition over compassion, accumulation over generosity and the comfort of the individual over the flourishing of the community. Jesus flipped the script on every one of these expectations.…

It seems to be a fairly universal human trait to want to know exactly what goes in each box. We have a work box, we have a family box, we have a faith box and so on. This pandemic year has turned our boxes upside down into one pile in the middle of the floor and the experience has been overwhelming to say the least. The box we guard most closely and tend to be most protective of however, is our faith box. We like things a certain way and we like them predictable. There has been nothing predictable about church this last year, which has ranged from distanced indoors…

Do we use our time to really live or do we allow time to use us up? I recently encountered this question in Kathleen Norris’ book, Acedia & Me and it was another reminder that the time we have is a gift from God. The way we use it matters. As a culture we sometimes worship at the altar of productivity. We boast of how many hours of overtime we put in this week or how little sleep we’re running on. We fill every evening with activities and when those brief moments of open time do appear, we pull out our phones. Jesus was undoubtedly productive during his time on…

I had the opportunity to take our youth group to our biennial church conference in Kansas City several weeks ago. Dustin Gaylon, one of our speakers speaking during a morning worship session, made the comment that “the fear of fear is community.” In the Gospel of John, as the end of his time on this earth nears, Jesus promises his disciples that he will not leave them comfortless. Before he is taken up into the sky the disciples receive the power of the Holy Spirit. But we should also not forget that as Jesus hung on the cross in John 19:25-27 he also instructs his followers to care for each…

It may come as no surprise that I have been reflecting a lot on resurrection this month. This is the season we focus our attention on the event of the resurrection. Anticipation builds in the church as we near the end of Lent. We sing hosannas on Palm Sunday, take communion on Maundy Thursday, reflect on the seven last words of Jesus on Good Friday, and show up for the highest attended Sunday service on Easter morning to celebrate the resurrection. But how do we keep from losing that energy when we head back to work on Monday? I believe one way to do so is by understanding resurrection as…

As Christians we believe the Bible is the living word of God. What does that mean exactly? It means that alongside studying the context of what the text meant to its original audience, we are also called to ask what the text is speaking into our lives today. There are many ways to do this, but the way that I have found particularly powerful the last few years is the question, “Where do you find yourself in the story?” Asking this puts us into a story in a new way, not as the reader, watching passively from a distance, but as a participant. We should be encouraged to ask wondering…