Living Untethered: Relinquishing Control to God

Grief and sorrow are an inevitable part of living. On this side of heaven, life gets hard and we often struggle to make sense of our pain – ours, or that of others. In our culture, it is often not acceptable to be in mourning for any significant length of time. It is uncomfortable to sit with the grieving, to hear them process their pain out loud over and over. We are sometimes told, by well-meaning Christians, that everything will be okay if we just trust God (that is true but not appropriate to say to someone in the midst of their visceral pain). So, we bury our pain and suffer alone in silence (perhaps because we don’t want to bother those around us). We do not know how to lament. A lament is giving voice to our struggle with grief, loss, trauma, pain, terror, sorrow, etc. It is stating that we are not okay with the way things are. It is not a statement of disbelief or loss of faith. Most often, a lament will take us on a journey toward recognizing God as the Almighty who will...

To be poised Vocabulary.com: You’re balanced, grounded, and ready for action Cambridge English Dictionary:   If an object or part of your body is poised, it is completely still but ready for action; ready to do a particular thing at any moment All the dictionaries agreed that to be poised is to be still, not moving, but ready to move. It has been suggested that, like rebooting your device when it is glitching out, I unplug this week and plug it back in again and see if it works better (it’s only Tuesday). If only life worked that way. It’s been one of those weeks where I have been hit with a combination of little stuff and some pretty big things. I don’t feel particularly poised for belief. Oh, I know the verses, in fact I’m sure I have blogged on some of my favourites. But some days are just a little more challenging than others. In Mark 5:21-43 we read the story of Jairus, a leader in the local synagogue. His 12-year old daughter is very sick at the point ...

A while ago my grandson asked: If we [boys] are made in God’s image, why are there girls? Why, indeed! “ Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” ” ( Genesis 1:26 , NIV84) Keep reading: “ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. ” ( Genesis 1:27 , NIV84) Together we give the most accurate picture of what our Heavenly Father is like. We need men and we need women. “ Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. ”       ( Genesis 3:20 , NIV84) For some reason Mother’s Day has gotten a bad rap. There are movements out there that suggest we remove this day of celebration from our calendars because it evokes so much pain for so many people. How can we respond to th...