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To the Pastors’ Spouses (and Those Who Love Them)

If you know a pastor’s spouse, check in with them. Give honest space to share. They might be bearing more than you know. Pastoring can be a very hard and demanding job. I know. I’ve been there. But I’ve also come to learn that being a pastor’s spouse brings unique challenges of its own, burdens often not known or understood.
July 22, 2024
Featured Articles
Featured

Dr. Ida

God unmistakably did call Dr. Ida. Though she was determined not to follow her father and his seven siblings into RCA mission work, determined not to spend her life in "dirty, dusty" India, she found she could do nothing else after being present one night at the successive deaths of three women in childbirth because their husbands refused for cultural and religious reasons to allow male doctors to attend them. As she heard the funeral drums the morning after all…
Featured
July 8, 2024

A Prophetic Call to Worship

Worship is the place where we face our fears, the place where we empty ourselves and wait to see if what Jesus said is actually true: “If you seek your life, you’ll lose it, but if you lose it, you’ll find it; unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Worship is the place where we wait for the fierce love of God to do its…
Tom Boogaart 5
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FeaturedFilm
July 1, 2024

Painting the “True Christ?”

A Hidden Life is flat-out arresting in multiple ways, a film that clarifies our own daunting time and the toll all manner of life perennially takes on everyone, from migrant poor to besotted privileged. Here, a “real life” peasant couple, devout and resolute, suffer an arduous journey that is at once exhilarating and formidable, ending in the darkest (or perhaps the brightest) of all places.
Roy Anker
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Featured
June 24, 2024

Poetry for the Church

Poetry fills the Bible. It spills from column to column and page to page. It covers one-third of the entire Old Testament. The book of Psalms, the largest book in the Bible, offers up 150 poems. Surrounding those poems, one prophet after another laments, condemns, and comforts in ringing lines of verse. The entire creation story of Genesis 1, quite arguably, has been composed as a single poem of repetition and variation, crowned by the creation of human beings.
Abram Van Engen
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Featured
June 17, 2024

It Was Time

It’s no longer time for each side to blame the other side for what happened. Angry, mocking words about those jerks on the other side are unhelpful. That’s the kind of thing that unbelievers are especially watching for. People of the world don’t care if we’re organizationally or institutionally one or not. What they want to see is whether or not we love one another.
David Landegent
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Featured
June 10, 2024

Seeing

I’ve submitted to endless rounds of treatment and taken buckets of medications for one thing: Life Moments. By that, I don’t mean the completion of a “bucket list” of meaningful experiences. I mean Life Moments as the intentional investing into something outside of myself that brings joy.
Dirk Hollebeek
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Featured
June 3, 2024

A Word to Gatekeepers

I’m no theologian, but I am a Bible-reading Christ follower, and after rereading the gospels recently, I can’t cite an instance where Jesus meets needy people honestly seeking him and keeps them away: Samaritans, prostitutes, lepers, adulterers, demon-possessed, tax collectors, prodigal sons. Regardless of their sins or ailments or reputations, he opens the gate to every one of them. It’s the Pharisees and, sometimes, the over-zealous disciples he reprimands for trying to close it.
Mark Hiskes
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Latest from the Blog

Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors.

  • At Sea
    The Middle Ages have been seen by some as a resource for challenging contemporary hierarchies of industrialization and exploitation.
    July 26, 2024 Josh Parks
  • Open Letter to the Calvin University Leadership
    Calvin, the university I love, should strive to be the safe space where LGBTQ+ students and the people who love them, feel safe, are affirmed as loved by God, and nurtured to become contributors to God’s coming kingdom . 
    July 25, 2024 Tim Van Deelen
  • Always
    Perhaps what makes the “always” so poignant is that our eventual understanding that always isn’t always.
    July 24, 2024 Dana VanderLugt
  • Notes from a Soggy Small Town
    While it can be hard to know what to do, how to help, I always have this: I know how to love.
    July 23, 2024 Deb Mechler
  • What might a prophet say about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump?
    After the attempt on Trump’s life, I heard politicians say, “This act does not represent America.” I’m guessing a prophet would say, “This is America.”
    July 22, 2024 Jeff Munroe
  • Looking for Beauty
    “Buen Camino” I said to him. He responded with the same and a smile.
    July 21, 2024 Chad Pierce
  • On Being Well
    Prayers for healing, even when offered with good intentions and sound theology, aren’t always helpful or hopeful.
    July 20, 2024 Rebecca Tellinghuisen
  • Reflections on a Near Assassination
    In hopes that the kingdom, power, and glory belong to another Messiah, I repeat my mantra: “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
    July 19, 2024 James Bratt

Poetry

Poetry
July 23, 2024

Any Such Tree (Metaphysicals XIX)

How vexing to be like a tree planted to produce sweet appls yet on whose grafted branches crab apples grow ...
D.S. Martin 3
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Poetry
July 16, 2024

Poems for Migration

This week we have two previously published poems about Monarch Butterflies. Make sure you check out the podcast where the poets talk about their poems and craft.
Jessamyn Rains and Harold J. Recinos 0
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Poetry
July 9, 2024

Poems for Summer

Check out two poems of summer you may have missed the first time they were published. Make sure you listen to the poets talk about their poems on the Refomed Journal Podcast.
Kate Bolt and Sarah Kalthoff Sims 0
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Poetry
July 2, 2024

Rachel, Cunning

You say I should revere the father who made my squint-eyed sister my enemy ...
Patricia L. Hamilton
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Poetry
June 25, 2024

Glisten (Metaphysicals XVIII)

She stands on her hill's height sure to cause sensation ...
D.S. Martin
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Poetry
June 18, 2024

Loaf

Snow sieves over the lawn like and angel's torn eiderdown minus the comfort ...
Laurie Klein
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Latest Podcasts

Podcast
July 23, 2024

“Any Such Tree”(Metaphysicals XIX) by D.S. Martin

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews D.S. Martin about his poem “Any Such Tree”(Metaphysicals XIX). D.S. is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021), Ampersand (2018), and Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis (2013) — all from Cascade Books. He is Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College, the Series Editor for the Poiema Poetry Series. He and his wife live in Brampton, Ontario; they have two adult sons. This is…
Rose Postma 0
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Podcast
July 2, 2024

“Rachel, Cunning” by Patricia L. Hamilton

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Patricia L. Hamilton about her poem, “Rachel, Cunning.” Patricia is a Professor of English in Jackson, Tennessee, and is the author of The Distance to Nightfall. She won the Rash Award in Poetry in 2015 and 2017 and has received three Pushcart nominations. Her most recent work has appeared in Slant, The Ekphrastic Review, Plainsongs, The Poetry Porch, and Prime Number Magazine.
Rose Postma
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Podcast
June 18, 2024

“Loaf” by Laurie Klein

In this episode of the poetry of edition of The Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Laurie Klein about her poem “Loaf.” Laurie Klein is the author of a poetry collection, Where the Sky Opens, and a prize-winning chapbook, Bodies of Water, Bodies of Flesh. A past recipient of the Thomas Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred, her work has appeared in various journals, anthologies, recordings, and hymnals.
Rose Postma
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Podcast
June 11, 2024

“Obnubilated” by Olivia Oster

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Olivia Oster about her poem “Obnubilated.” Oliva is a writer living on Lookout Mountain, GA, whose fiction and poetry explore the spiritual aspect of common everyday life as well as the elements of life with which she is most familiar: chronic pain, parenting, gardening, cooking, and homemaking. She has published A New Grammary, a grammar book focusing on grammar formulas, and a poetry chapbook called Poetic Faith. Olivia is also a…
Rose Postma
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Podcast
June 4, 2024

“Jesus Heals a Paralytic” by Ryan Keating

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Ryan Keating about his poem “Jesus Heals a Paralytic.” Ryan is a writer, teacher, and pastor on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. His work can be found in publications such as Saint Katherine Review, Ekstasis Magazine, Amethyst Review, Macrina Magazine, Fathom, Fare Forward, Roi Fainéant, and Funicular. His chapbook, “A Dance In Medias Res” is now available from Wipf and Stock.
Rose Postma
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Podcast
May 21, 2024

“Summer Drums” by Steven Peterson

In this episode of the poetry edition, Steven Peterson talks about his poem “Summer Drums.” Steven writes poems and plays in Chicago. A selection of his poems are in the anthology Taking Root in the Heart (Paraclete Press, 2023). His recent poems appear in Alabama Literary Review, The Christian Century, Dappled Things, First Things, Reformed Journal, and elsewhere. His plays have been produced around the USA and he is currently a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists.
Rose Postma
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