Everything Sad is Coming Untrue

Sometimes I get discouraged about how broken the world is. I mean, I have a theological answer to suffering that makes logical sense, but that logic falls to pieces when faced with the senselessness and the depth of pain attached to something like slavery, or child soldiers, or the mass and systematic oppression of women around the world. It’s just too much to cope with, even for me, sitting in a trendy café with my MacBook and my $4 cappuccino. Darkness is overwhelming. And I can’t say I’m not nearly convinced by those who can’t believe a good God could exist in such a dark world as ours.

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The Worst Christmas Songs

This will not come as a shock, but I love Advent and Christmas. It really is the perfect time of year for someone with a pensive, sappy, traditional, and slightly liturgical bent. This season is so much about moments. It’s really the only time of year the culture at large seems to be attune to most of the things that are especially important to me: relationships, contemplation, remembering, ambience, experience, food, and, of course, art.

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A Light and a Promise

…according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Ephesians 1:9-10, ESV)

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Lavish Grace

So, I’m doing a series of devotionals for Titus Women (the ministry I work for), going basically verse by verse through the book of Ephesians. I may or may not post them all here, since at the rate I’m going I probably won’t finish the book for 6 months. I’ve been amazed how long I can linger over one or two verses. There’s so much depth and beauty in Scripture, so much to ponder. Here are this week’s thoughts on two verses from Ephesians 1.

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He Speaks a Good Word

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places …. (Ephesians 1:3, ESV)

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When Freedom is Chains

A few weeks ago, I was at a Women’s Conference in Michigan. The theme was “Celebrate Your Freedom,” and that’s exactly what we were doing. All around me women were being freed from sin, from fear, from lies, and most of all from self-centeredness. Jesus really did come and set captives free.

But there I was, feeling the very opposite of free. In fact, all I could feel for sure was the subtle weight of an old, familiar chain.

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Called by Name

A few weeks ago a wise, older lady I work with said something in passing I haven’t been able to shake. She was reading a passage of Scripture aloud, and came to one of those sections that list a bunch of impossible-to-pronounce names. But she didn’t skip over it, as I would’ve done. She read every name, then said this: “Isn’t it beautiful? We get their names. It’s not just a group of people. Yahweh knows their names.”

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Literature and Courage

This afternoon I opened a brand new Norton Critical Edition of Howard’s End. Though I’ve never read the book before, the familiar typeface and smooth pages that so clearly identify a Norton text brought back a flood of memory. How many hours did I spend studying similar pages? Countless hours, working my way through the canon from “The Wanderer” to Wordsworth, sifting through footnotes that served more to slacken my pace than actually illuminate the work (except in the case of The Canterbury Tales, during which I needed those notes very much). Toward the end of my undergraduate tenure I always read with a pen in my hand, ready to underline or add marginalia as need arose.

That felt blasphemous at first—defacing a book, adding my own thought to an author’s words. But eventually I learned to interact with literature, conversing with the text instead of just listening to it. Of course my contribution to the conversation was primarily a series of unanswered questions or ponderous “mmhmm”s, but still, I’d come a long way.

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