Mothering in Church: Do Not Grow Weary in Doing Good
Many seasons of life present us with difficult situations. Caring for elderly parents, battling chronic illness, entering or ending a career—such circumstances all present unique challenges, and they can make church attendance and fellowship with the body of Christ difficult to achieve. Mothering young children is another season that can present a challenge as we strive toward spiritual growth and community with a local body of...
A Few First Steps in Hospitality
Last year—yes, Lockdown-2020—my husband and I read Rosaria Butterfield’s The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in our Post-Christian World. The timing could not have seemed worse! How were we supposed to host people in our homes and live out the beautifully bountiful form of generous hospitality that the Butterfields exemplify when many people in our community did not consider being closer than...
How the Trinity Changes Prayer
Until recently I had apparently been under the unconscious impression that close study of the Trinity was needed only if I encountered some abstract, theological question about it that puzzled me. Otherwise, I was content to affirm the doctrine in faith and go on about the seemingly more relevant aspects of the Christian life. I had been perfectly content with this arrangement until I recently encountered a puzzling question about the...
Giving Thought to Giving Birth
As I near the third trimester of my second pregnancy, I find myself immersed in the world of maternity care once again. Pregnancy is a very tangible way to meditate on the already/not yet paradox of the Kingdom of God: I have a baby, and also I have yet to have my baby. In all the dreaming and planning for the baby itself, it can be easy to overlook that pivotal transition: the having of the baby—labor and delivery (in Spanish, “the...
The Chief End of Man’s Education
The purpose of education is a complex issue. Christians have spent hundreds of years working through a biblical understanding of what the telos or end goal of education is. Some of the greatest minds of Christian history like Clement of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, and Thomas Aquinas wrote at length on the subject. Unfortunately, many Christians today have forgotten this long history of Christian thought and have allowed...
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