As a college student, Advent season also means finals season. These tests determine if I have or have not learned precisely what I was meant to over the entire last semester. For me this consisted of vocabulary, theology, Greek and Hebrew translation…
Since Teresa died this June, everything I go through is a first. First baseball season. First Fall. And now I just had my first Thanksgiving since she died. That went okay, because my son and I and some family went to Steeplegate Inn for brunch, and…
Light, life, healing…three words that capture the promise of God to all people at Advent and always. God’s light often shines brightest when life seems darkest. That light makes difficult places tolerable. When my husband passed away I was sure lif…
Life is a long and tedious process. It is full of ups and downs. There is a lot of good and some bad. We all have some things to push through. I think it is what makes us who we are. For me there has been a couple of things that were really hard. I l…
When I reflect on light and life in the world, I immediately think of my children. Having a kid is bringing a new and fresh light into the world. It brings new life to the people lucky enough to have made the child. It sparks a renewed vision and foc…
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It’s been about a year and a half since my fiancé Bailey and I moved to the Quad Cities. This has been a big adjustment for a lot of reasons. For me, the biggest hardship was being overcome by wave after wave of homesickness in this new land of unkno…
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God with us’.” (Matthew 1:23). It’s easy to imagine how strange this notion of God being “with” us (not just “over” us) was to some of the bigwigs of Jes…
Frodo and Sam’s situation is dire. They are trapped in a dark tunnel with a monstrous creature coming at them from the shadows. True, they have been in sticky situations before, but this one seems particularly hopeless. However, all is not lost. J. R…
When I think of light and life, I think of my daughter, Chelsea. Our experience as a family, with her illness as a three-year-old, was immediately overwhelming to me and my faith. I grew up in the church. My dad was a pastor in a small-town church in…
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” – C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” In August 2017, my wife, Sonia, and I made a pilgrimage to Homestead National Mon…
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In the hallways and classrooms at Madison Elementary School, eight St. Paul members teach, lead, and offer therapy for the students. For some, this is their first year at the school. For others, they’ve been a part of the building for many years. St….
I take videos of moments, primarily so that I may extract the photos I’d like to keep. Recently I recorded, then recaptured in stills – frame by frame – our youngest child’s birthday cake lighting ceremony and singing. To describe: It begins with dar…