I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the tension between idealism and “the way things are.” I’m a naturally sincere and optimistic person. I want to improve the world around me, and when I touch the lives of those around me I want that to be a net positive. I often make the mistake of […]
A friend told me this week of his sadness about one of his friends—in particular, the picture of God she seems to have. She pictures God, he says, as an angry, easy-to-displease Being—someone who is supposed to love her, but she’s not at all sure God does. She worries about God’s opinion of her. She […]
6 January 2024 | Happy New Year, Everyone! Your incredible generosity during our recent year-end fundraiser has left us humbled and filled with a renewed sense of purpose. You matched every dollar of the $48,000 matching challenge generously issued by the Adventist Today board and helped us surpass our $100,000 goal for the fundraiser. These numbers, while […]
I’ve always been drawn to the concept of liminal spaces. Liminal—meaning a threshold or a portal, or some type of space in-between—can represent transition. It can be a difficult space of ambiguity where you are neither here nor there. But it can also be a place of reflection of where you just came from, and […]
I understand why ancient societies in the Northern Hemisphere celebrated the winter solstice. When life and livelihood depended on the sun, noting when daylight began to incrementally conquer darkness was something to be celebrated. Sure, the ancients knew they still had to endure months of cold and darkness before they could shed their heavy clothes and the […]
It’s the most neglected of parables—perhaps because we Adventists don’t like the questions it raises. I’m referring to Jesus’ saying, “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins” (Mark […]
Adventism has a PR problem, it seems to me. We tend to be insular, sticking to our own kind. Many of us enjoy living in one of the Adventist bubbles—be it Berrien Springs, Silver Spring, Loma Linda, or in my case, Binfield, England, the home of Newbold College. While we like to think of ourselves […]
American Thanksgiving is a confusing holiday for me. The older I get, the more I learn about why we celebrate Thanksgiving and the real story about what happened between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. I learned that the Thanksgiving holiday the United States celebrates today was created during the American Civil War to help foster […]
“Why,” asked a friend this week, “are so few Adventist churches really happy, rewarding places to be?” Human beings are always going to have conflicts, I told him, and there is no organization that is entirely free of them. It doesn’t matter if it’s an office, a club, a school, a family, or a church. […]
It’s a familiar trope in action television and movie scripts. A group of intrepid survivors slogs through dark and threatening dangers. Suddenly one of them experiences a melt-down: “It’s no use,” they whine. “We’ll never survive!” Then someone in the group yells, “Get a grip!” and slaps the cowardly team member. “We’re going to make it,” […]
Last Sunday morning when my phone reminded me it was October 22, I felt moved to say something about it. The result, completed late afternoon of the same day, was this widely shared essay. I was astonished at how many of you resonated with my feeling that the church we grew up in used fear and […]
I spent a significant portion of my childhood and teens intensely jealous of the spiritually certain. Those who spoke of ‘blessed assurance’; who claimed, ‘I haven’t a doubt in my mind that….’; or believed that ‘God has made it unmistakably clear that….’ How could they be so unwavering in their faith, I wondered? What did […]