Scripture teaches that God gives us good and perfect gifts (James 1:17), yet loss and grief are inevitably part of the human experience. How do we live in this world?  I once attended a [...]

Recently I re-read a portion of my Aunt Josephine’s life story. She was the middle sibling of five, with my dad being the oldest. The children lost a younger brother early on. Then, when [...]

 Facing Grief My first experiences of intense grief were borrowed:  I watched as others grieved, children and mothers gone too soon; grieved cruelty born from racism; and grieved loss from upheaval and displacement. [...]

It was a muggy night, and we sat on old couches from the 1970s in a concrete building. We had landed in Ivory Coast, West Africa, less than 48 hours before, and we were [...]

Sermon Conversations with Alex and Aaron There’s only so much we can cover in a Sunday morning gathering! Each week, you’re invited to tune into our LIVE podcast at 11 am on Thursdays – [...]

House of Cards I was going to be famous. Beloved. That was my plan. Bullies beware – Kris (Duncan) was going to “be somebody.” I packed my bags and moved to Los [...]

From 1972 through 1973 I worked in a small, artsy shop dedicated to fabricating lightweight convention displays. The shop owner was a somewhat eccentric architect named Donal McLaughlin. Given his laid back approach to [...]

They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with [...]

I attended private schools and often I heard about “Back East”-- a place where many of the schools’ families had once lived. This legendary region was reputed to be our nation’s epicenter of high culture, [...]

Sermon Conversations with Alex and Aaron There’s only so much we can cover in a Sunday morning gathering! Each week, you’re invited to tune into our LIVE podcast at 11 am on Thursdays – [...]