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Inside Out

What Happens When We Get It Wrong?

“James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you…
December 31, 2015
Reviews

Tackling the Psalms in One Volume

THE BOOK OF THE PSALMS (THE NEW INTERNATIONAL COMMENTARY ON THE OLD TESTAMENT) NANCY DECLAISSE-WALFORD, ROLF A. JACOBSON, BETH LANEEL TANNER EERDMANS, 2014 1,073 PAGES $60 “Reflecting the combined insights and strengths of three superior biblical scholars, this book is the most complete and detailed one-volume commentary available on the Psalms”: so boasts publisher William. B. Eerdmans. Before I comment on this mammoth book and respond to that claim, honesty demands that I begin with full disclosure: I am neither…
December 31, 2015
Essays

Faithful Pastoral Care: A Response to Domestic Violence

“Come! Live in the light! Shine with the joy and the love of the Lord! We are called to be light for the kingdom, to live in the freedom of the city of God. We are called to act with justice, we are called to love tenderly; we are called to serve another, to walk humbly with God.” – David Haas Domestic violence has been a social problem for generations. Research studies show that families in the church struggle with…
December 31, 2015
As We See It

Barefoot Teaching

Today is not just the first day of teaching in a new semester for me; it also marks the beginning of my 25th year in the classroom. My silver anniversary, if you will. I’m not sure it’s an occasion for a party or anything. And I realize it’s clichéd to say, but it really doesn’t seem that long ago that my 22-year-old self was walking in to teach English 131AK: Expository Writing to incoming first-year students at the University of…
December 31, 2015
Poetry

New Pictures

For sad people like us it helps to have pictures— or rather, new pictures to displace familiar ones. Old pictures don’t change. I once had a picture of a chicken in mid-flight. I used to laugh at it. Now it seems utterly banal compared to the picture of you tackling your sister. In it, you are goofy-gorgeous. I used to think of life as an ocean of pictures; these days I think of it as a river in linear motion.…
December 31, 2015
Essays

What Does the Sticky-Faith Movement Mean for the Church?

“If the church is ever to flourish again, one must begin by instructing the young.” – Martin Luther “Welcome to the Sticky Faith Cohort Summit! We are so excited that all of you are here!” Kara Powell said as she greeted us in late February 2012. That first night when we arrived in Pasadena, California, my team and I were full of excitement and energy, even after a long day of travel. After introductions of the nearly 40 churches that…
December 31, 2015
Poetry

Dramatis

Poor lovers, we know our parts none too well, nor our cues. We kiss in the dark, backstage, under the glow of EXIT, near stacked chairs. Music emanates from an orchestra pit out there in the lights, in the heat, and we strain to hear through velvet the arrow that points to our time to stumble out, screw up, a thousand sleepless eyes gazing, papers rustling, no applause but the rain falling in sheets across the theater roof, gurgling in…
December 31, 2015
Reviews

The Departed Who Haven’t

UP THE HILL JAMES CALVIN SCHAAP NEW RIVERS PRESS, 2014 E-BOOK $6.99 There is an appealing sense of redemption in the notion that our daily cares might extend in a purified form beyond the limits of our temporal lives. The linked stories in James Calvin Schaap’s collection Up the Hill offer several versions of that essential redemption. Most of the characters in these stories, including our central narrator, inhabit the cemetery “up the hill” from the town of Highland, Iowa;…
December 31, 2015
St. Catherine Crowned
Inside Out

On St. Catherine’s Wheel

I waited patiently for the Lord; who inclined to me and heard my cry. Who drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure… — Psalm 40:1-2 As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; Do not delay, O my God. — Psalm 40:17 In A.D. 310, a beautiful and learned virgin,…
October 31, 2015