Blog Posts

Four Keys to Tending Your Secret Garden

June 13, 2017 by joe Leave a Comment

A couple weeks ago, my 10-year-old son Robbie and I attended the Denver Center for the Performing Arts staging of the musical, The Secret Garden. While we both enjoyed the music, the staging, and the story, on the way home we talked about the deeper metaphors within the play.

It started with a conversation about people and the saying, “Hurt people, hurt people.” In case you’re not following, people who are hurting often express their pain by hurting others.

Then we compared hurt people to the locked up secret garden. Then we identified Mary Lennox, her uncle Archibald, and her cousin Colin as locked up gardens. For each, a story explains the door closing, the neglected ground, and the loss of the key. The essence of the story revolves around the healing of those hurts, tending gardens of the heart, and the blooming of souls.

How about you? Is your heart a secret garden? Are you hurting and find yourself hurting others? Here are four keys (pun intended) to tending your secret garden.

What life lessons can we take from The Secret Garden?

My Problem, as a Christian, with Memorial Day

May 29, 2017 by joe Leave a Comment

Congress declared Memorial Day a Federal Holiday in the United States in 1968. However, the tradition of remembering soldiers who died in battle extends back to the Civil War. This honoring in Christian circles often draws comparisons between soldiers and Jesus, both of whom laid down their lives for others.

But there are underlying assumptions behind this rhetorical move, assumptions that contradict Jesus’ Gospel of the Kingdom. But rather than ignoring the behind the scenes problem or simply rejecting Memorial Day altogether, I wonder, is there a better way for those who are both citizens of the United States and the Kingdom of God to remember on Memorial Day?

An Uncontrollable Faith

May 19, 2017 by joe 1 Comment

Uncontrollable faith … this is where I find myself after decades of hating God through fear, blame, and control.

As I explained in my Hating God post, hating God through control began my freshman year of high school. At the time, I was ready to check out of the church. That said, I really didn’t have any other place to go. I was an outcast at school, the magic of Boy Scouts vanished, and I didn’t have any other hobbies beyond video games. I was, in every way, lost.

Then a guy named Ken, who volunteered with my parents’ church’s youth group, noticed me. I can’t explain why, but somehow, this lost kid ended up on his radar and he made it his personal mission to save me. Ken was a bit wild and crazy. In my straight-laced world, he had the appeal of a rebel. But more than anything, he cared.

I wasn’t any good at basketball, but he used to drive miles out of his way to pick me up and drop me off for the church’s youth league games and practices. He did the same for other youth group events. Perhaps most importantly, he helped me connect with other youth. Before long, I had friends.

This created a new conundrum for me. I hated God, but all of my friends were connected to the church. How do you balance those two realities? For me, the answer was to control. I used my intellect and the discipline of theology to box in God. It started in high school and continued through undergrad. My Master of Divinity degree is descriptive as my life’s aim was mastering the divine.

It’s hard to identify when I stopped boxing in God. Perhaps in some ways, I have yet to. But here are a few key steps along the journey and a project to help all of us embrace an uncontrollable faith.

Uncontrollable Faith — What would it look like to let God out of the box?

Three Takes on a Mother’s Love

May 14, 2017 by joe Leave a Comment

As I write this, it’s only a few hours until Mother’s Day. As is often the case, I’m woefully under-prepared. I bought cards (thanks to Kiana reminding me) and planned to send them, but a tea-related transit accident killed ruined those intentions. I haven’t replaced them. The meal prep I should have sorted out by now is still waiting for a Google recipe search. All my good intentions for celebrating the most important women in my life (my wife, mom, my mother-in-love, and Nana) now sit in the “maybe next year” pile.

Looking at what I haven’t done, I realize it’s the kind of stuff that those important women always prioritize, plan in advance for, and ceaselessly find themselves ready for when the day arrives. It could be part of a mother’s love … or maybe it’s that I’m still losing to a heart that’s turned in on itself.

All that said, moms have been on my mind tonight. I’m working a late night shift stocking footwear at REI. It’s peaceful in the warehouse and, beyond my podcasts, my only company is my thoughts. So I shuck shoes and think about moms and their love. Then, when on breaks, I’ve been scribbling down my thoughts.

So here are three takes on a mother’s love from three moms who’ve been part of my life. Please share your story in the comments below and happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there.

Falling Into God

May 13, 2017 by joe 1 Comment

How do you go from hating God to falling into God? I found a new God … the one I could trust.

Have you ever done a trust fall? It’s a team building exercise where one person stands on a chair, table, or a higher platform with their back to the rest of the group. The rest team then forms two lines standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the two lines facing each other. The idea is to have the elevated person fall straight backward between the two lines and into the waiting arms of their teammates. (Still not clear? Check this out.)

If the falling person trusts the team and goes straight backward with their body like a board and parallel to the ground, and the team members stand there and try to take their portion of catch, the weight of the falling person distributes easily across the group so no one person bears too great a load.

It’s a simple exercise for those doing the catching. It can be terrifying for the person who’s falling.

Moving beyond hating God through blame, is like an ongoing trust fall with God. Thus, falling into God.

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