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What Doesn’t Kill You

Liminal spaces stink. They just do. No matter how much you squint you can’t see through the fog. But the more you take care of yourself, the more gratitude you have for being alive for another day. The truth is life isn’t always about thriving, it’s often about surviving.
October 7, 2024
Featured Articles
Featured

Living in Disconnection: Sin, Shame, Trauma, and Healing What’s Within

Exploring our wounds is not merely a therapeutic exercise. It’s a theological exercise. If disconnection is the essence of trauma, then we’re invited to explore what our own lives look like - and the shared life of our churches and communities – when lived within the traumatic conditions of our exile from Eden.
Featured
September 23, 2024

Jack

I’ve been ruminating lately on the rejections, absurdities, and moments of grace that could make someone a poet. What forces send a person into this difficult art, where anonymity is assured and financial reward all but nonexistent? How does the stuff of life become this particular craft?
Featured
September 16, 2024

Going to Graceland (Again)

The takeaway is that the elder Paul Simon, the great music man of his time (move over, Bob), though now gray, half deaf, and of raspy voice, professes the mystery and allure of beauty amid the perplexing mystery of the human capacity to relish, exult, know, and express. Throughout Seven Psalms, in multiple forms ranging from chant to song story, Simon meditates on the strangeness of the reign (or rain) of the marvel of being alive in this resplendent cosmos.
Featured
September 9, 2024

For this Reformed Christian, Trump is an antichrist. Let me tell you why.

Trump is an antichrist because he seeks to put himself in the place of Christ and because his words and actions are a grotesque and demonic travesty of the real Christ. But there is a further reason that he is an antichrist: There are people, including Reformed Christians, who embrace him as their supposed Messiah, even if they do not all seem to be fully aware that they are doing so. Without their support – their discipleship – Trump would…
Featured
September 2, 2024

Seeking Justice in Schools: A Christian Call to Pursue Educational Equity

How did we get to a point wherein significant educational inequities – injustices – seem intractable? And why aren’t Christians shouting from the rooftops about it? Why doesn’t educational injustice seem to make the list of our primary concerns? Or maybe even our secondary concerns?
Featured
August 26, 2024

We Are Stewards of the Mystery

There have been many metaphors for pastors. How might we enrich our understanding of the pastoral role by considering pastors as “stewards of the Mystery?”
Featured
August 19, 2024

What Now? After Synod

Some time has passed since June’s Christian Reformed Church Synod 2024. The Reformed Journal reached out to several people from across the CRC asking them to respond to three questions.

Latest from the Blog

Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors.

  • Buddha, Jesus, and My Brother
    He left home for California before his twenty-first birthday without looking back and it broke my parents’ hearts.
    October 10, 2024 Theda Williams
  • Content To Be An Observer
    I run up against the puzzle that confounds everyone who reads, teaches, or preaches: what else is there to say? 
    October 9, 2024 Jared Ayers
  • Masculinity (Taylor’s Version)
    Taylor donned a sequined power-suit jacket and launched into “The Man,” a wry, bass-heavy riff on the unfair gender standards we all live and breathe.
    October 8, 2024 Jonathan Hiskes
  • You Are Not Alone
    We had become good friends and loved to talk and argue about lots of ideas, including politics, ethics, and morality....
    October 7, 2024 Rebecca Koerselman
  • Looking for the Helpers
    This sugary-sweet idea of hope is empty and impossible to connect with, especially when one is in the midst of a mental health crisis.
    October 6, 2024 Alyssa Muehmel
  • For Our Daughters: We Need to Know
    Here at the RJ, we are eager to support the work of our colleagues, so a few of us will...
    October 5, 2024 Debra Rienstra
  • It was a wonderful day, God. That is all.
    Nightly prayer time was predictably unpredictable. I would scramble out of his room after tucking him in to write his prayers down word-for-word
    October 4, 2024 Kathryn Vilela
  • Preemptive
    Mitigating and reversing the effects of climate breakdown is the most urgent work of humanity right now.
    October 3, 2024 Tim Van Deelen

Poetry

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.
Poetry
September 17, 2024

What Depths I Pass Through Unknowing

Along our route to the sea laps low ...
Poetry
September 10, 2024

Setting Flagstones

First I place them in a line atop a narrow path along the side of the house ...
Poetry
September 3, 2024

God

So much depends upon a baby ...
Poetry
August 27, 2024

The Woman at the Well Would Pay Any Price

The marketplace vendors admit they can't explain God. They shrug and pocket pomegranates ...

Latest Podcasts

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,…
Podcast
September 10, 2024

“Setting Flagstones” by Paul J. Willis

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Paul J. Willis about his poem “Setting Flagstones.” Paul is Professor Emeritus of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara, California. Paul has published eight collections of poetry and the most recent is entitled Losing Streak, which was published this year. You can read the poem at Reformed Journal.
Podcast
September 3, 2024

“God” by D.A. Cooper

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews D.A. Cooper about his poem “God.” Cooper is a husband and father of three children. He lives in Houston, Texas where he teaches political science and the Italian language at a local community college. He is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. You can read the poem at Reformed Journal.
Podcast
August 27, 2024

“The Woman at the Well Would Pay Any Price” by Matthew Miller

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Matthew Miller about hos poem “The Woman at the Well Would Pay Any Price.” Matthew teaches social studies, swings tennis rackets, and writes poetry - all hoping to create home. He and his wife live beside a dilapidating orchard in Indiana, where he tries to cut paths through the thorns for their four sons to hike through. His poetry has been featured in Whale Road Review,…
Podcast
August 20, 2024

“Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none” by Nathaniel A. Schmidt

In this episode of the poetry edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Nathaniel A. Schmidt about his poem “Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none.” Schmidt is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church and serves as a hospice chaplain. He holds degrees from Calvin Theological Seminary, Calvin University, and the University of Illinois Springfield. His newest collection of poems, Transfiguring, is available from Wipf & Stock, as is his first collection, An Evensong. He lives with…