current affairs and causes on Rootedness

Before Seattle resident Edith Macefield died at age eighty-six in 2008, she refused to sell her house to developers for the $1 million they had purportedly offered. Macefield wanted to die at home. Se...

Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them as from a root.

God who hears our cries and is moved by our suffering, Speak to us a word of comfort, challenge, co-mission. Capture our attention and call us out of our routines, That we might catch a vision of your...

Consider the banyan tree, a remarkable species found in India and other subtropical regions. As it grows, its sprawling branches become increasingly heavy. But instead of breaking under their own weig...

Our prayers must spring from the indigenous soil of our own personal confrontation with the Spirit of God in our lives.

The most exemplary nature is that of the topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and in the penetrating energy that issues out of its peaceableness. It increases by experienc...

The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lor...

Authentic spiritual authority is what puts you in touch with reality.

Landmarks Lost For those of us who have been in the path of Hurricane Helene—quite surprisingly, I might add, since the hurricane models even a few hours before landfall had it going about 100-200 mi...

It’s perfectly possible to have an orthodox Christianity that understands itself to be at the center of making human culture, while interacting with non-Christians and their cultural products who are ...

Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection to put all things in right relationship again.

Belonging can be such a fickle and painful process in life. As the popular researcher and writer Brené Brown describes in her book, Braving the Wilderness, she struggled to fit in after moving to New ...

A Tree in Which to Perch  An impressive California Sycamore tree used to grace our village. It rose majestically by the water’s edge, a few yards away from the wooden bridge that spans the lake whi...

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....

Seeds of faith are always within us; sometimes it takes a crisis to nourish and encourage their growth.

There is a great difference between successfulness and fruitfulness. Success comes from strength, control, and respectability. A successful person has the energy to create something, to keep control o...

Did you know that apartheid in South Africa was based in large part on theological doctrines that were formed at Stellenbosch University in the 1930s and 1940s? Isn’t that chilling? Many of the intell...

A Western upbringing tends to stress questioning authority, which is always asking why, why, why.

First, God placed humans here on earth to work the land where we are standing. The Hebrew here literally means to “serve” the land, implying that we humans are designed to serve the place where we liv...

Why does a tree bear fruit? Not because there is some law of nature that says it must. But simply because of the life within it, rising up from the soil and water that feed its roots and flowing in th...

People think the sabbath is antiquated; I think it will save us for ourselves… When we rest, we do so in memory of rest denied. We receive what has been withheld from ourselves and our ancestors. And...

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

The soil is, as a matter of fact, full of live organisms. It is essential to conceive of it as something pulsating with life, not as a dead or inert mass. There could be no greater misconception than ...

[A gardener cultivates soil more than plants.] He lives buried in the ground. He builds his monument in a heap of compost. If he came into the Garden of Eden he would sniff excitedly and say: ‘Good Lo...

The Gospel as such has no native country. He who goes out humbly with Christ in the world of all races will perpetually discover the multiple, but constant, relevance of what he takes. It takes a whol...

Traditions tell us where we have come from. Scripture itself is a better guide as to where we should now be going.

Too Busy for God? American work culture is all-pervasive. For many members of your congregation, it can be a real fight to get actual time off—and cell phones and the internet has made it possible to...

When an issue is less central to one’s identity it’s possible to feel, for example, “I really should do more to help those in need, but it’s just too hard’ or ‘I just can’t find the time.’ But when th...

Define yourself radically as beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.

When an issue is less central to one’s identity it’s possible to feel, for example, “I really should do more to help those in need, but it’s just too hard’ or ‘I just can’t find the time.’ But when th...