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My Mother is in Hospice Care

Loss of memory can sometimes be a gift. I know it isn’t always, and I can imagine that there are plenty of counter examples, but as I sit with my mom and experience (for the ten-millionth time in my life) her love for me, I realize that there can be a kind of grace in not remembering a few things. It’s not denial; it’s choosing to remember her life as good. My mom wants to leave this world a grateful…
March 25, 2024
Featured Articles
Featured

Of Giants and Waves

He always told me that the most important thing in working in a hot fight is to recognize that everybody wants to simplify the issues so you have clear reasons for killing each other (spiritually, of course, in most church conflicts). He said that the most important thing one can do is to “complexify things.”
Featured
March 11, 2024

Standing on the Word

Today, my ESV Bible is all marked up and highlighted, with copious marginalia. It is full of stars, exclamation points, hearts, WOWs and “thank yous.” Someone looking through it might think that my faith is superficial, that it lacks nuance and complexity. But I know the world of struggle that lay beneath each heart, each star, each exclamation point.
Featured
March 4, 2024

Footnotes to Fiction: Confessions of a Post-Pandemic Wannabe Novelist.

That I’d written a novel surprised people because I have a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies and for many years taught college courses and wrote nonfiction books about film and media. My day job kept me busy enough. (Maybe that’s why I lost sleep over whether to kill off my erudite professor character.) But I have this story I’ve always wanted to tell, and started carving out time to do some research, make notes, and organize material until I could…
Featured
February 26, 2024

Pentecost Sunday:  The Kingdom, Scripture, and Same Sex Marriage

The Bible is a historical book, thus requiring historical tools of analysis, the most basic of which is establishing the context for what is going on in the text. The Bible is also a literary book, thus requiring literary tools of analysis, like asking the genre of a text: a chronicle is not a poem, nor a first-person account, nor a letter of a specific church, nor an apocalypse. There is, in fact, no such thing as “quoting Scripture” with…
ChurchFeatured
February 19, 2024

How the RCA and CRC Differ

It is remarkable to me that the differences between the RCA and the CRC are epitomized by the names of their respective LGBTQA advocacy organizations. All One Body sounds idealistic, biblical, Pauline, seeking union, cohesion, and alignment, and suggesting “all for one and one for all.” By contrast, Room for All sounds looser, more practical, more eschatological, Lukan rather than Pauline, assuming multiplicity, variety, and space, and requiring the practice of embracing otherness. “All one body” trades on shared identity,…
Featured
February 12, 2024

Thoughts While Burning My Flag

What it means to be an American and a Christ follower is the defining question for the American church today. There, in the wet grass and the fog, with the ashes already cooling, I struggled to discern a way to be both.
Featured
February 5, 2024

Could I do What They Do?

Recognizing this tendency to limit myself, I prayed, asking God to show me places I’d been holding back. I prayed for the courage I knew I’d need to respond in faith. Teresa says, “Fear distorts knowledge of self…And so I say, my friends, let us set our eyes on Christ…then self-knowledge will not make us timid or cowardly."

Latest from the Blog

Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors.

  • Action & Passion
    Jesus fulfills his vocation most fully, not when he’s acting, but when he’s acted upon. Not in action, but in passion.
    March 27, 2024 Jared Ayers
  • Love Them as Yourself
    This is not a blog about immigration policy.  This is not a blog that will necessarily even inform or speak...
    March 26, 2024 Scott Hoezee
  • Playing Ball Like….a Megastar
    In a pivotal scene from the film, The Sandlot, “Ham” Porter gives the final chilling insult to the boys from...
    March 25, 2024 Rebecca Koerselman
  • Ride On, King Jesus
    I’ve spent time asking why I might have joined the crowd who dropped cloaks and lifted grasses in that politically charged counter-procession.
    March 24, 2024 Julie VanDerVeen Van Til
  • Messiah Complex
    The cinematography is amazing! The production design incredible! The acting top-notch! The directing visionary! Eh. I was bored.
    March 23, 2024 Debra Rienstra
  • March Madness
    Just so happened to sit on a folding chair set up directly beneath the basket on the north end of...
    March 22, 2024 James C. Schaap
  • Stonington
    Distance hides it a bit but not too much. I checked the rearview and braked hard to turn south on...
    March 21, 2024 Tim Van Deelen
  • Blossom and rejoice and sing
    Four years ago, at right about this time, I started the blog with T.S. Eliot’s observation that “midwinter spring is...
    March 20, 2024 Jennifer L. Holberg

Poetry

Poetry
March 26, 2024

Release (Metaphysicals XV)

If when the end has ended & all that's been running down begins to rewind until each beginning has once more begun ...
Poetry
March 26, 2024

Be Killing Sin

I was 7 and riding the school bus home to the trailer we lived in back then ...
Poetry
March 19, 2024

A Shout

From the falling form of an intricate vase, water was freed ...
Poetry
March 12, 2024

I Don’t Know the Biochemistry of a Hummingbird

I can only wonder at this blurred whir of evidence ...
Poetry
March 5, 2024

Above the Tree Line

When God wanted to speak, God's mountain goat jawbone locked shut ...
Poetry
February 27, 2024

Love Like An Ocean (Metaphysicals XIV)

Batter my boat Wide-spread Water make your breakers shake my hull ...

Latest Podcasts

Podcast
March 26, 2024

“Be Killing Sin” by Cody Adams

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Cody Adams on his poem “Be Killing Sin.” Cody is an English teacher from Buffalo, NY. His poetry has appeared in Ekstasis Magazine, Heart of Flesh, Cacti Fur, among others. He received the 2016 Clarence Amann award for his short story Unstuck. He also serves as a Board Member for Forefront Festival.
Podcast
March 5, 2024

“Above the Tree Line” by Lynn Domina

In this episode of the Poetry Edition of the Reformed Journal Podcast, Rose Postma interviews Lynn Domina about her poem “Above the Tree Line.” Lynn is the author of 3 collections of poetry and a professor at Northern Michigan University. Her articles have appeared in Studies in American Indian Literature, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, and other academic journals and edited collections. She lives with her family in Marquette, on the beautiful shores of Lake Superior.
Podcast
February 27, 2024

Love Like an Ocean (Metaphysicals XIV) by DS Martin

In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews DS Martin about his poem Love Like an Ocean (Metaphysicals XIV) inspired by one of John Donne’s Holy Sonnets. Don is a widely published poet and the Poet-in-Residence at McMaster Divinity College. He's also a series editor for the Poiema Poetry Series. You can listen to other poems in this series in The Reformed Journal Podcast. You can also read the other poems by DS Martin on our website.
Podcast
February 20, 2024

“Everything That Rises” by Josiah A. R. Cox

In this episode of the Poetry Edition, Rose Postma interviews Josiah Cox about his poem “Everything That Rises.” Josiah is a writer, editor, and educator from Kansas City, Missouri. He holds an MAR from Yale Divinity School and an MFA from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where he currently serves as a junior lecturer. He has served editorial roles with various journals and presses, including Yale University Press, The Yale Review, and The Hopkins Review.
Podcast
December 20, 2023

“Oversight” by Paul J. Willis

In this episode of the Poetry Edition, Rose Postma interviews ⁠Paul J. Willis⁠ about his poem “Oversight.” Paul is a retired professor of English from Westmont College and the author of several collections of poetry. His most recent poetry collection is ⁠Somewhere to Follow⁠. His newest project is entitled ⁠A Radiant Birth: Advent Reading for a Bright Season⁠, which he co-edited and is published by InterVarsity Press.
Podcast
December 17, 2023

“Somewhere in the Judean Hills” by James C. Schaap

On the last episode of the holiday special by James C. Schaap, author and retired English professor, he reads "Somewhere in the Judean Hills." Today, the youngest shepherd in the hills is the one directed to stay behind with the sheep when the others go to Bethlehem.