Calling & Limitations
Limitations don’t have to be losses; they can be the avenues to our flourishing. This is particularly true if we stay focused and creative within their boundaries, if we care for and cherish what’s inside them.
How Did We Get Here? The Science of Faith
Humanity is the work of God’s own hands. If you think that life on Earth took four billion years or so to get where it is now, the Bible gives you room to hold this view. If you believe it took seven days, the Bible gives you a solid place to stand. What it does not yield to either camp is that we are a cosmic accident.
Where You’re Planted
I’ve long felt intimidated by the vast catalog of contemplative disciplines, viewing them as something else I’m supposed to do, follow in a particular order, using precise language, while journaling, as the sun rises, before checking my phone. What I’m finding my soul desperate for these days, though, is silence. Sometimes the most helpful something is a sacred nothing.
Eyes to See
I used to believe that on Earth, most of us received an equal distribution of pain; we all had a comparable storm to endure. But after two storms in my first quarter of a century—my dad’s suicide and a seventeen-hour brain surgery—I started to wonder if maybe this wasn’t true. Maybe pain didn’t play fair.
Redefining Communion
We can make our way through entire days and weeks without acknowledging the Beauty of our Creator. Without admiring His creation, or loving our neighbor. Without taking one long look in the mirror, and choosing to truly love what we see. To acknowledge the truth that the Image of God exists within me.
What You Get When You Choose Gratitude
This rhythm of thanking God even in the loss of expectation begins to retrain our minds to recognize Him sometimes withholding not just the things we desire but blessedly, the things we most fear.
Naming the Good
It is our choice, perhaps our duty even, to see this good and to call it by name. We must tell each other the story, from the grandiose themes to the name of the smallest beloved one, and in so doing we make manifest the story of hope that is within us all, and it is good.
The Final Question
Sometimes, the asking is more important than the answers, because it reminds us that we still have a voice and we are not alone, even in the midst of the great mysteries of our lives.
The Thorns
Since we know the end of the story, we can confidently endure, moreover embrace, the depth of suffering guaranteed in our own days. It is impossible to live in the joy of new life if we don't first internalize just how far we've been taken away from death.
Survival Guide: The Smiley Family
When you go through something hard, you’ll find a lot of well-meaning people are quick to reassure you that “God never gives you more than you can handle.” But if you’ve ever truly suffered, you know that’s not true. At some point in your life, even if you think you’re ready for it, God is going to give you more than you can handle. And then what do you do?
Survival Guide: Katherine & Jay Wolf
Hope Heals seeks to re-narrate the story of suffering by sharing the lives and lessons of real people—their honest answers, vulnerable struggles, and surprising transformations through enduring life's greatest storms.
Paying Attention to What We Remember
Responsible remembrance is a bit of past-changing magic that gives us the grace of distance, which leaves space for perspective and gratitude to redefine our past, present, and future.
The Good/Hard Life
When we choose to embrace the stories we’re living and release the stories we wished for, we can know in our deepest places that this good story is being written a God who can’t write any other kind of story.
Waiting Well
Our lives have been full of good things, which means our future is full of good things if we are willing to define and identify them rightly.
Opening Our Hands
What we find on this side of the journey is that loss, in its purest form, is a fear of death. The good news is that when we are connected to Jesus—resurrection personified—we need not die at all.
Joyful Rebellion
What if we could see celebration as a form of worship—a necessary, life-giving acknowledgement of God's goodness?
Telling a New Story
What we remember teaches our brains what to expect. By remembering the past thoughtfully, we can anticipate the future with hope.