During Lent, I’ll be writing six hymns that capture the spirit of reflection for the season. I will publish them on Sunday mornings. All the hymns will be set to well known tunes, so they will be easily shareable and singable upon reading.
Hymn 6 is titled Sing, Sing My Heart and can be sung to the tune of O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing (AZMON), or any other tune that uses the common meter.
During Lent, I’ll be writing six hymns that capture the spirit of reflection for the season. I will publish them on Sunday mornings. All the hymns will be set to well known tunes, so they will be easily shareable and singable upon reading.
Hymn 5 is titled To You Who Rest in God’s Abode and takes its inspiration from Psalm 91. It uses the same tune as O God, Our Help in Ages Past (ST ANNE), but can also be sung to any tune that uses the common meter.
During Lent, I’ll be writing six hymns that capture the spirit of reflection for the season. I will publish them on Sunday mornings. All the hymns will be set to well known tunes, so they will be easily shareable and singable upon reading.
Hymn 4 is titled Praise God Who Comforts All My Pains and uses the same tune as Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow (OLD 100th).
During Lent, I’ll be writing six hymns that capture the spirit of reflection for the season. I will publish them on Sunday mornings. All the hymns will be set to well known tunes, so they will be easily shareable and singable upon reading.
Hymn 3 is titled Be Balm and Sweet Relief and uses the same tune as Jesus Paid It All.
During Lent, I’ll be writing six hymns that capture the spirit of reflection for the season. I will publish them on Sunday mornings. All the hymns will be set to well known tunes, so they will be easily shareable and singable upon reading.
Hymn 2 is titled Man of Sorrows and uses the same tune as Eternal Father, Strong to Save (Melita).
Getting a Masters in Religion, especially since I focused on Biblical Studies, has filled my head with a number of things that I would love to hear and say from the pulpit. Hard topics are not typically the ones that get preached, but it is the hard topics that captivate my imagination the most. What if instead of giving easy answers that always point towards the fulfillment of scripture in Jesus’ ministry, we really let people wrestle with the text, the way Jacob wrestled all night, and was wounded for the rest of his life because of it? What if instead of always coming back to the same ideas of grace, mercy and love, that we recognized without our scriptures are stories that we can easily use as proof to do the opposite? I have no idea if I will ever get to share these ideas in a more public way, but it feels right to voice them nonetheless.
Hagar and Sarai (Gen 16)
Can we stop looking at this text as if one of the women loses and the other gains? I don’t see anyone in this story gaining anything other than a complicated mess. If we push past the tendency to pick a side, I think we can see that both women are trapped in systems that do not benefit either one of them, and these systems also prevent them from working towards their mutual good.
Samuel and Eli (1 Sam 3)
Can you imagine being a child and having to tell Eli, the priest of all Israel, that his sons are so corrupt, and that it reflects on his leadership? Do you hear the quaver in Samuel’s voice when he tells Eli that he will be replaced? Do you feel the weight of the words he speaks, a small voice given authority to speak the truth to a mighty power? And what is Eli’s response? “Let it be.” What a perfect example of humility.
Vashti (Esther 1)
Vashti said no. She said no to being used, to being a tool for the powerful, to being a plaything for her husband and his friends, to be a possession to prop up his ego. She said no despite what it would cost her. How brave.
The Woman Healed from Her Flow of Blood (Mark 5)
The desperation that drove this unnamed woman to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment must have been so powerful, that the story made a remarkable impression upon the writer of the text. Her story interrupts the story of a man asking for healing for his daughter. Her story represents the millions of people who live with chronic illness and yet somehow must live their lives. That Mark includes a case of healing from gynecological disease should give us hope that the gospel is powerfully inclusive. Jesus’ ministry includes women’s and reproductive health. Are we preaching the same kind of gospel?
The Faith of the Father of a Demon Possessed Boy (Mark 9)
Asking for a miracle for his son, this unnamed man utters “I believe! Help my unbelief.” And isn’t that a wonderful five word summary of the whole journey of faith?
Nearly every time I read through the instructions in the Hebrew Bible, I wonder what the text might look like if it was brought forward into the modern world. I don’t think we would be bringing animals and fruits from our fields and gardens. These are not the tokens that we find meaningful now. Below is a reimagining of the offerings from the book of Leviticus. If we followed these instructions, how would it change us and the way we interact with each other?
These are the offerings that you must bring to the altar of the LORD your God, so that you please the LORD your God.
The peace offering is to be brought to the altar when you have offended a neighbor. For an unintended offense, bring a large coffee, hot or iced as your neighbor prefers. You must make any dietary modifications as required or else the peace offering will not be accepted. For an intended offense, you must bring a gift card to your neighbor’s favorite restaurant, in an amount that will cover a meal for them and all their household. Lay the peace offering on the altar of the LORD when you have offended your neighbor. The peace offering must also include a prayer of repentance, whether the offense was intended or unintended, so that you may please the LORD your God.
The gratitude offering is to be brought to the altar when a neighbor has done you a courtesy. The gratitude offering is to be a hand-written letter expressing why your neighbor’s actions had a positive impact on you. Bring the gratitude offering to the altar of the LORD as often as you receive courtesy from your neighbor, so that you may please the LORD your God.
The humility offering is to be brought to the altar when you have lost your temper. If your humility offering is for something small, like a miscommunication or a disagreement about a work project, the offering is to be houseplant that is not easily killed. If the humility offering is made because of a larger blowout, like a fight with a family member on a holiday, the offering is to be a something that can be planted in the yard, like bulbs for the garden, or a fruit tree. Bring the humility offering to the altar of the LORD. The humility offering must also include a prayer of repentance, whether you lost your temper over something small or something large, so that you may please the LORD your God.
The replacement offering is to be brought to the altar when you have accidently lost or destroyed your neighbor’s property. Whatever it was that you lost or destroyed, whether a book, a piece of Tupperware, or an item of clothing, bring an identical item to the altar of the LORD. If you cannot afford to bring a replacement for the item that you lost or destroyed—if for example, the item was something costly like a vehicle, or irreplaceable, like a piece of jewelry from a deceased relative—then the replacement offering is to be a notarized letter stating that you will perform household chores for your neighbor until your labor has paid for the item you lost or destroyed. Your neighbor may not take advantage of you when you are doing this labor and must release you from the labor after the cost of your labor has paid for the cost of the lost or destroyed item. If your neighbor takes advantage of your labor, you are to ask the priest to intervene in the dispute, and the LORD will decide between you and your neighbor.
The empathy offering is to be brought to the altar when you have dismissed your neighbor. Whether this was intended or unintended, the empathy offering must still be brought, so that you may please the LORD. The empathy offering is to be a handmade item that you designed with the dismissed person in mind. It can be anything you feel is fit for your neighbor—a piece of pottery, a drawing, a fibercraft, an original piece of music, a poem or short story. Bring the empathy offering to the altar of the LORD. It must also include a prayer of repentance, whether the dismissal was intended or unintended, so that you may please the LORD your God.
These are the offerings that you must bring to the altar of the LORD your God, so that you please the LORD your God.
I started a master’s program this week. I am studying religion with an emphasis in Biblical studies at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. This is something I have wanted to pursue for about 14 years, but never had the courage to apply, until this past spring. There is something transformative that happens to you when you surround yourself with people who really believe in the value that you bring. I’m thankful for the friends who encouraged me explicitly and implicitly to pursue this. Below is one of the essays I wrote as part of my application.
When I think about who God is, there is ultimately one word that comes to mind: love. Love, and God, manifests in many forms, but each way can be stripped back to this basic idea.
God loves people. From the very beginnings of the story of our faith, we see God loving and caring for people. Genesis tells us that God did not want Adam to be alone, and so God created Eve. When God calls Abram out of Ur to go to a new land, God does not put conditions on the promises, saying “I’ll give you this land if…” God hears Hagar crying out in despair and meets her in her pain. God rescues the Israelites from slavery and protects them on their journey through the wilderness. God continually forgives when the Israelites repent of their idolatry. God even entered the human story as a human, to walk beside us and show us—personally—the ways of righteousness.
Jesus shows us great love in the way he welcomed and cared for the afflicted, the oppressed, those who were ridiculed or dismissed by society, and those who were seen as outside of the Jewish society. When Jesus talks of his father in heaven, we see the picture of a just God, one who loves and accepts, who calls for humility and offers grace. Jesus loved his friends, surely, but also his enemies, healing the ear of one of the soldiers sent to arrest him, and praying for the crowd as he was dying.
God loves the earth. Scripture tells us that what God created was good. It reminds us that God cares for the sparrows just as he does for us. It teaches us the earth will praise God—yes, even the rocks will cry out—and that the trees of the field with clap their hands in joy. God cared for the animals that the Israelites used as sacrifices, by commanding merciful treatment of them through Levitical law. God created a richly beauteous world that is full of wonder. The very complexity of interconnectedness of the natural world signals to me that God loves the earth enough to spend the care it takes to put such a complex system into motion.
When I think about the ways in which God loves, I also feel the amazing power God has to transform. God is always transforming me—sometimes through pruning, and sometimes through letting me grow. Just as a gardener will dead head the rose bushes, so the flowers will keep growing, so God clips away all the unhealthy parts of me. God is a caretaker, and caretaking is at its very heart, a kind of love. It is the kind of love that wants to see a flourishing, but it is also a sacrificial kind of love. As the caretaker of my garden, I want to see my plants thrive. I take time to make sure that happens, watering them, pruning them, giving them extra fertilizer when they need it, pulling out the weeds that could choke them out. In the same way, as a caretake for my children, I put in the effort it takes to have them grow into responsible, kind, loving and self-aware adults. This takes time, patience, effort—sometimes it even takes tears. This is how I imagine God, constantly working on me, constantly beside me, guiding me, leading me, teaching me.
Jesus’s parables are full of the imagery of the garden and the farm. There are cultural reasons why he would have chosen these metaphors, but I think the genius of Jesus’ teachings is that they transcend their own time period, calling us to think about one of our most basic needs. Humans will always have a need to grow food, whether we do it industrially or individually. Jesus used imagery of the earth and how to care for it in his teachings on how God cares for us, and to show us how to live life to the fullest. This underscores the importance of God’s love for the earth at the same time it shows us God’s love for people. Pastoralists and practitioners of early agriculture would have known that to care for the farm or the garden was critical to survival. Jesus using this imagery shows how critical God’s love and care is for our own spiritual health and survival. Without it, we would surely wither, just as the vine does without proper care.
Finally, God loves me. Yes, even me. Though I might not feel like it at all times, God continually loves me. God loves me enough to open doors for me. God loves me enough to push to me to grow. God loves me enough to send me comfort when I am hurting. God loves me enough to give me opportunities to flourish and to use the gifts I have been given. God loves me enough to reveal Godself to me continuously, through my mentorships and friendships. God has loved me when I am at my worst, and God has loved me when I am at my best, and I know God will always do this. God is, ultimately, the best gardener and caretaker I know.
The Quick and the Dead 