One of my favorite posts of the year! I reflect on seven years on our street and in this house, and on seasons of receiving as a sign of God’s coming Kingdom.

We need books that, instead of preparing us to go toe-to-toe with one another, show us how to walk shoulder-to-shoulder as we receive Jesus’s gospel of grace and welcome the kingdom of God.

Here are some questions I have personally found to be helpful to consider when reading any book on a hot-button cultural topic.

Perhaps the abundance we’re looking for is hiding in plain sight.

“Loving our enemies” is not a mere lens through which to see the world, but a mandate Jesus actually means us to follow. Jesus shows us the depth of his meaning as he embodies his own words on the Cross, saying of those those who falsely accused, mocked, tortured, and murdered him: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

If I am to follow Jesus into loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, then I must do it here, right where I am.

Once we are with Jesus and all this death and mourning have been met with God’s comfort, and heaven and earth have been joined finally and forever, we’ll have a lot of fun and have the joy of eternity-long, open-hearted, uncomplicated friendship. 

The words of Jesus cut through our native tongue of fear, offering us a new language of hope, not outside of, but right in the midst of our fears.

Those scarred hands alone can hold the gratitude and deep sadness we’re feeling all in the same breath as we praise him for a decade together.

I wonder what life might spring up in our world if we held our mandate from our Creator to “fill and subdue” (Gen. 1) with the posture of a child, full of joy, delight, awe, and curiosity.

For much of my life in Christ, I believed that the purpose of relying on God’s strength in my weakness was to learn to be strong. It sounds almost right, doesn’t it? But God’s gentle correction to my self-sufficiency-loving heart has been this:

God invites me to rely on his strength not so that I can learn to be strong, but so that I can learn to be dependent.

Nurture in me the things that will grow into eternity, that will have a home in the “city you will establish forever.”

Yet this day of ash and repentance and bread and wine speaks to my soul that though I am fatally limited, I am also infinitely loved. And so I bear the ashy cross on my head in humility and sorrow but also in hope, for it is not the dirt that will have the final word, but the precious blood of Christ.

Those of us who have set our hope fully on our King and his coming Kingdom are like February gardeners. We see the hard ground and hard hearts of Winter all around, yet we are also those who “rejoice, though we have considered all the facts.”

Our wounds will not disappear, but they will be made new. The hands of our Healer are transforming our wounds into marks of love,

During the season of Epiphany, we remember that just as God revealed his glory, goodness, and light by a star to guide the Wise Men to the feet of Christ, our lives also shine his light, reflect his love, and hold out his hope to the weary in a dark world.

Or the alternate title: “How I Was Just Crazy Enough to Read 57 Books in One Year with Four Kids, Five-Years-Old and Under”

“If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.” 

I believe Jesus offers a better, deeper, fuller way to pay attention to what is happening in our world.

Imagination is not a triviality of childhood, afforded by immaturity and lives sheltered from the harsh realities of this world. On the contrary, imagination is essential to our life in Christ, giving us the eyes to see the things in this universe that are the Most Real, True, Good, and Beautiful.

The love and life of Christ in our home bears witness to the truth that our family, our home, our street is caught up in something not just a century old, but something eternal.

Behind our home, there is a dirt-paved, trash can-lined alleyway with power and telephone lines arching overhead. And in that dusty, tumbledown alleyway, there is an unexpected gift—a row of the brightest flowers, growing tall and wild, along a neighbor’s chain link fence.