psalms on Divorce

Thank You, Lord, for the gifts of life, of love and of care that come from You, wrapped in our moms and step-moms, in our grand-moms, great-grandmas, daughters, sisters, and aunts. We’re grateful for...

Ted Turner. He is 71 years old (written in 2014), and still in the news. With a net worth estimated around $2.3 billion, Turner has made an impact on cable television, news reporting, and major league...

Philip Yancey writes of a friend whose marriage was choked by hostility. One night the friend reached the breaking point: “I hate you!” he screamed at his wife. “I won’t take it any more. I’ve had eno...

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

Change invariably leads to loss, loss to grief, grief to anxiety and, finally, anxiety to hostility. We need therefore, to acknowledge grief. We need to understand and choose to walk with the grieving...

May you refuse to do battle against the parts of yourself that need love the most. Set down your sword. Say hello to every shard. Hello, grief. Hello, sadness. Hello, anger. Hello, madness. ...

Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.

An individual doesn’t get cancer, a family does.

No matter how much the world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons us.

O God, you have bound us together in a common life. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for justice and truth, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual...

A few days ago I met with a young couple. Their toddler was injured in a car accident. When I visited them in the hospital, the child was on life support. As we stood outside the ICU and spoke, I saw,...

Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.

When God wants to sort out the world, as the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount make clear, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the broken, the justice hungry, the peacemakers, the ...

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.

In her memoir, Confessions of a Good Christian Girl, Tammy describes the internal turmoil she experienced trying to be a good, rule-following Christian who had unexpectedly built an entire life arou...

Who knows why God allows heartbreak, but the answer must be important enough because God allows His heart to break too.

Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.

One of the challenges, at least in the western church, is an inability to deal with our wounds in a healthy way. Our training as Christians has been focused on Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday ...

An atheist professor delighted in tearing down the Christian faith of zealous freshmen. By his own admission, he was arrogant, selfish, and intolerant of anything that didn’t measure up to his standar...

Ann Voskamp, in her book The Broken Way, describes what it was like to have mental illness trivialized from the pulpit, as someone who identified with similar struggles: I was eighteen, with scars a...

All that I ever really needed to know about uncivil language I learned in the fifth grade. At a small Dutch Calvinist school in a New Jersey city, I was playing with other students just before classes...

There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief."

Love alone makes heavy burdens light and bears in equal balance things pleasing and displeasing. Love bears a heavy burden and does not feel it, and love makes bitter things tasteful and sweet.

We probably got a bit too cocky about how well our lives were going. But after disability showed up in our family, we learned that life is not tame. It’s not here to align with our desires and plans. ...

While brokenness is difficult, it’s beautiful because it makes God look good. Your natural gifts draw attention to yourself while brokenness draws attention to your Lord. With this in mind, power is d...

When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...

People by nature build, tear down, and rebuild. We build our hopes, get disappointed, and then search for renewed hope.

In her beautifully written memoir Unafraid, Susie Davis reflects on fear after experiencing a school-shooting as a high-school student. It was after this that Davis began to experience regular bouts o...

Leader: God of life, when life is broken, All: we turn to you. Loving Christ, when hearts are broken, you come to us. Holy Spirit, this broken world needs us; flow through us to all the...

In her book The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp shares a beautiful exchange between her and her husband (The farmer). His encouragement is for all of us: that God uses the broken things in this world for good...