simply, Christian

the gift of a beating heart

Nobody can will their heart to beat even once. Every heartbeat is a gift from God and it means he’s not done with you yet. The idea that we are going to put less value on another person’s heartbeat because they are disabled or because they carry an incurable disease is anathema to us. Remember, when Jesus rose from the dead he restored . . .

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Posted in: quotestheology

February 09, 2017

Trump's inauguration: his call for jihad

the perpetuation of unChristian American exceptionalism

Along with much of the world, I watched this morning as Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. We watched with baited breath, wondering what he would say and how he would act after such a divisive and vitriolic election. We wondered if he would seek to unite America and be a harbinger of peace to the world or if . . .

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January 20, 2017

parenting is hard

helpless, powerless, but filled with hope

Over this Christmas break, I had a stark realization: parenting is hard.

This Christmas was unlike any other we have celebrated as a family. Our youngest, adopted from Ethiopia after over a year of abuse in a state-run orphanage, is currently living in a therapeutic foster home because of nearly four years of violence against the . . .

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Posted in: adoptiontheology

January 17, 2017

Wendell Berry on miracles

The miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the turning of water into wine – . . .

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Posted in: quotestheology

January 11, 2017

T.S. Eliot on a difficult faith

You will never attract the young by making Christianity easy; but a good many can be attracted by finding it difficult: difficult both to the disorderly mind and to the unruly passions.

— T.S. Eliot

This quote showed up in my today, courtesy of The Plough daily dig email. Immediately I was struck by how . . .

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January 10, 2017

on being mistaken for Christ

thoughts on Holy Innocents' day

We live in a fallen world where injustice, calamity, and horrors are too frequent and too real. Spending just a few moments reading the news quickly reminds us of these truths. At first blush, it would be easy to consider the slaughter of the Holy Innocents who gave their lives as just one more example of the brokenness of our world, and as . . .

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Posted in: theology

December 28, 2016

"the man who cries out against evil men..."

The man who cries out against evil men but does not pray for them will never know the grace of God.

--St. Silouan the Athonite

H/T Eclectic Orthodoxy

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Posted in: quotestheology

December 20, 2016

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