brokenness on Having it All-Together

One Ash Wednesday a decade ago, when I was new to Anglicanism, I knelt at a rail as Fr. Thomas, my priest, smeared a black cross on each forehead. “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall ret...

Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.

You've got to admit you're broken before you can be made whole.

If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings qui...

This is the middle. Things have had time to get complicated, messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore…. Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack here and pitches his ragged tent.

Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgrims making their way to ...

The Gospel doesn't reveal to us that life isn't messy. In fact, God, in the Incarnation, joins us in the mess. Consider this illustration to highlight how the Incarnation transforms our expe...

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgri...

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.

In the land whose founding metaphor was the mutuality of John Winthrop’s seventeenth-century vision of a “city set on a hill,” we live more and more in estranged, hostile, exclusive enclaves, linked o...

As for Christians, well, we really have just one thing going for us. We have publicly declared… that we are desperately in need of Another to give us his righteousness, to complete us, to live in us. ...

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...

“And in the end, we were all just humans.. drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”

If we all acted the way we really felt, four out of eight people at a dinner table would be sitting there sobbing.

Regarding Ash Wednesday Note: This passage appeared as part of the lectionary for Ash Wednesday. It starts with the gospel passage for that day, but   attends to the other passages and themes, so it...

Excursus on Ash Wednesday The Meaning of Ashes Ashes represent many things. The heaped up ashes in a hearth may indicate the benefit of warmth on a cold winter’s night. The charred remains of a per...

In his book, Scary Close , Donald Miller acknowledges that over time he developed a mask, or a persona that kept even those closest to him from experiencing with him. As he began to peel back layers ...

Preaching Commentary The teachings contained in this passage are, for my money, as difficult to preach as any lectionary text. Not only is each teaching difficult in its own right, but each has also...

Preaching commentary Speakers in the Text First, let’s sort out the text on the basis of the speakers. The books of the major prophets, much like the Psalms, are anthologies of the respective proph...

It's funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then whe...

I’m unfinished. I’m unfixed. And the reality is that’s where God meets me is in the mess of my life, in the unfixedness, in the brokenness. I thought he did the opposite, he got rid of all that stuff....

The Broken Heart Bonus Content: Video prep session with Jin Cho on Psalm 51 . Password:  Bn*=61p! Introduction Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent: a time of p...

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

Introduction Ash Wednesday Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent: a time of penitence, fasting, and prayer, in preparation for the great feast of resurrection. The season of Len...

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off.

Leader: How good it is to sing praises to our God! People: Great are You, Lord and mighty in power. You understand everything about each one of us. You heal the brokenhearted and bind up our wounds....

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.

Brokenness to redemption, where mercy and grace kiss both sides of our face. Brokenness where we are split open. Redemption where God knits us back together. Mercy when we don't get the punishment...

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...