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Alf’s Story: An Advent Meditation

On a Damascus Road of sorts, seeing beyond the proof text, I’m able to say to myself and anyone who’ll listen, “Yes, really!” Come cancer, depression, or roulette wheels, we are never alone. Emmanuel. God is with us.
December 2, 2024
Featured Articles
Featured

Paul McCartney and Me

Aging and retirement are distinct concepts, of course, but they frequently intersect. For clarity’s sake, let’s agree that aging is a natural biological process that occurs over time, involving physical, cognitive, and social changes. It’s a universal experience that affects everyone. McCartney and I are both aging, whether we like it or not. And we are both old, according to actuarial tables.
Featured
November 18, 2024

Big Red, Job, and the Power of Remembering

Job hopes that God will long for him and come calling. In short, he hopes that God will remember him. In the life and ministry of Jesus, this is exactly what God does. Christians believe that in the person of Jesus, God remembers our fragile existence in a fragile world. In Jesus, God and the world were reconciled. Call it atonement; call it ransom; call it victory over the forces of evil. By whatever name, God remembers us.
Featured
November 11, 2024

The Means of Grace: An Invitation to All

He opened our eyes to what we all knew but had forgotten: that prior to the Reformation, the Catholic Church had devalued the sermon in public worship; the Protestants, in their zeal for the recovery of the scripture, now in their own languages, made the sermon the new focus of public worship, and thereby relegated holy Communion to a secondary place, offering it only once a month, or even, in some cases, just four times a year.
Featured
November 4, 2024

Loaded Language

Words are absorbent. Used often enough in partisan slogans or ad campaigns, or by certain religious groups or by "influencers" (itself a word with a troubling history), or spun into new usages by disaffected teens, they can be diverted from their broader purposes. They become contaminated by association or overdetermined by repetition, and so less usable for more neutral efforts to identify or describe. As words are turned into trademarks or code language, they become harder for speakers outside the…
Featured
October 28, 2024

Palestine and Israel: Come and See

My journey to Palestine and Israel began 20 years ago. A Palestinian Christian, Claudette Habesch, then the Secretary General of Caritas Jerusalem, spoke at a luncheon at our church. She described what life was like for her and other Palestinians who were living under the Israeli occupation—checkpoints, roadblocks, excessive use of military force, imprisonment, land confiscations, home demolitions—and especially its effect on Palestinian children. At the conclusion of her talk, I asked, “What can we do?” “Come and see,” she…
Featured
October 21, 2024

What I Learned from the Better Together Convening of Concerned Congregations

When I think about church ministry, I think about disaffiliation. At council meetings, we attend to the details of disaffiliation. When I gather with other pastors, we give updates on our disaffiliation process. If you’re a regular reader of the Reformed Journal, you’ve read quite a bit about Synodical decisions and disaffiliation over the last few months. None of this is what I originally wanted for myself or for the church, so I also get angry about disaffiliation and about…
Featured
October 14, 2024

Make Truth Great Again

We face significant barriers if we can’t agree on the fundamentals of knowledge. Perhaps when (and if) the lair of liars is removed from media’s mainstream and extracted from public consciousness, we could begin to talk to each other again. But it is also possible that the damage has already been done. We have built the permission structures to allow truth to lose its meaning. But as Christians we must be truth-tellers above all else. In so doing we can…

Latest from the Blog

Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors.

  • Maternity Leave
    Over the last few months I’ve been sitting with the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a guidepost in this season of life.
    December 6, 2024 Marcy Ryan
  • A Tapestry of Connection
    For most of the seniors, the threat to their well being isn’t an accident or health, it’s loneliness.
    December 5, 2024 Dana VanderLugt
  • Conversations
    Conversations occur in the context of a community, one’s colleagues, students, family members – and other interested people.
    December 5, 2024 Tim Van Deelen
  • Baptized Imaginations
    Imagination opens our eyes to God, teaches us to attend to the world God has made, enables us to experience the holy mysteries of God’s creating and rescuing acts in Christ.
    December 4, 2024 Jared Ayers
  • Joining the Feast
    We, too, are labor-intensive: much time and attention are needed to produce writing for a blog and a journal, for book reviews and a poetry podcast.
    December 4, 2024 Jennifer L. Holberg
  • Too Precious to be Casually Discarded
    The Reformed Journal’s example offered hope that we could honor our perceptions of a troubling world without sacrificing our love of a faith that was too precious to be casually discarded but too corrupted by its compromises to be simply accepted.  
    December 3, 2024 James Bratt
  • Little Libraries
    I’ll always take a peek inside our neighborhood little libraries when I pass them by.
    December 3, 2024 Katy Sundararajan
  • All the Saints I Met Almost Anywhere
    I love to see the saints, behaving decently.  They don’t usually make headlines or go viral, and they would be uncomfortable with the attention. They just keep loving their neighbors and serving God.  
    December 2, 2024 Rebecca Koerselman

Poetry

Poetry
December 3, 2024

Make a Joyful Noise

meaning click tongue when crossing the street for joy of having legs ...
Poetry
November 19, 2024

November Cold

Ice crusted sheets over November puddles bespeak more of the future than this cold day ...
Poetry
November 5, 2024

5th Commandment

Among the earliest of sins ...
Poetry
October 15, 2024

The Writer

Half-court. Dad said our perch from steep bleachers allowed us a good view of the players.
Poetry
October 8, 2024

Let the Party Begin

It's not always easy to carry good wishes and admiration in a see-through bag ...
Poetry
October 1, 2024

After the Thirteen Shock Treatment

I asked for two fried egg sandwiches and a blueberry milkshake. I got soup.

Latest Podcasts

Podcast
December 3, 2024

“Make A Joyful Noise” by Abigail Carroll

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma talks with Abigail Carroll about her poem “Make A Joyful Noise.” Carroll is author of three poetry collections: Cup My Days like Water, Habitation of Wonder, and A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim. Her poems have been anthologized in How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope as well as in Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and…
Podcast
November 19, 2024

“November Cold” by Dave Warners

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal, Rose Postma interviews Dave Warners about his poem “November Cold.” Beginning in 1997, Warners has been teaching Botany and Ecology at Calvin University. Since 2009 he has directed Plaster Creek Stewards (PCS), a faith-based watershed initiative based at Calvin. Dave also teaches at Au Sable Institute in Northern Michigan and with the Creation Care Studies Program in New Zealand and Belize. In 2019 Dave and colleague Matthew Heun published…
Podcast
November 5, 2024

“5th Commandment” by James Ryan Lee

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews James Ryan Lee about his poem “5th commandment.” Lee received an M.F.A. from the University of California, Irvine, where he studied under poets James McMichael, and Michael Ryan. His poems have appeared in Aethlon, The Minnesota Review, Juked, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Ordained Servant and Christianity and Literature. Duke University Press republished a section of his poem, “Bee Suit: Spring Chores with Grandfather,” for National…
Podcast
October 15, 2024

“The Writer” by Olga Dugan

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Olga Dugan about her poem “The Writer.” Olga Dugan is a Cave Canem poet. Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, her award-winning poems appear in many literary journals and anthologies including Ekstasis, Spirit Fire Review, Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith, The Windhover, Agape Review, ONE ART, Litmosphere (forthcoming), The Write Launch, Ariel Chart, The Sunlight Press, Emerge, Kweli, Sky Island Journal, evolution: The Red Moon…
Podcast
October 1, 2024

“After the Thirteenth Shock Treatment” by Jack Ridl

In this episode of the Reformed Journal Podcast, the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Jack Ridl about his poem “After the Thirteenth Shock Treatment.” Ridl is an American poet and former professor of English at Hope College. He is the author of several collections of poetry, has published more than 300 poems in journals, and has work included in numerous anthologies. You can read the poem on at Reformed Journal.
Podcast
September 17, 2024

“What Depths I Pass Through Unknowing” by Katherine Indermaur

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Katherine Indermaur about her poem “What Depths I Pass Through Unknowing.” Katherine is the author of I|I (Seneca Review Books), winner of the 2022 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize and 2023 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and two chapbooks. She is an editor for Sugar House Review. Her writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, Frontier Poetry, New Delta Review, Ninth Letter, the Normal School, and elsewhere. She lives in Fort Collins,…