Encouragement & Perspective from a God/Love Geek
The gospel can be cut so many ways. “Good news” for a woman begging is different than for a rich Westerner, or trafficked boy. But concepts like unconditional love and freedom keep me busy.
I’ve heard many Christians stress about people needing to “convert” or “be saved” to avoid hell. Was it similar thinking that sparked the convert-or-die theology of the Crusades?
Was ‘The Bachelor’ a jump start for ‘Secret Princes’ where royalty go undercover to find true love? These shows expose our longing to be loved for who we are, not what we have, do, or who we’re friends and family with.
Might it be the same with God?
Did Superman always walk around with the cape..?
Continue reading “Playing ‘Hard to Get’ with God, or the Other Way Around?”
I’m a bit bible nerdy and instead of skipping over peculiar texts, I sometimes dwell on them. It’s a quirk I’m trying to appropriate so here’s my take on a text you probably never heard preached in church: The fourteenth day.
It appeared during Moses’ instructions to Israel before the 10th and final, most gut-wrenching plague. Every first born was to be killed and this plague sparked the Exodus from Egypt.
Continue reading “The Fourteenth Day: An Obscure Prophecy That Might Give Everything Purpose”
Disney’s Brave touched my heart like Frozen, but deeper. In Frozen we glimpse sacrificial love and our divine identity, but Brave touches something deeper: the reality of our love-hate relationship with God.
Merida, a fiery and fun-loving princess who wants to live on her own terms (who doens’t?) runs up against traditions that oppress her spirit. Her mother tries to prepare her for all the ways and responsibilities of a princess, including arranged marriage, but the pair are losing their minds and each other.
Continue reading “If God Was a Bear: “Brave” & Rebelling from Love”
I started this post in Nov. 2016 before the first #MuslimBan, then #Charlottseville happened, and now #DACA (deporting children and young adults who grew up in, and contribute to America, because they were not born in the U.S.). Even now, the political developments are whirlwind-like.
The call to protect our people | our borders | our way of life | were fierce already before the election, but look at U.S. now…
This election amplified aspects of America (and the world) that have been hidden from mainstream media’s eye. But festering wounds can never be healed with bandaids and as all things eventually come to Light, Love is mobilizing.
Continue reading “Dirt & Hope Under America’s Rug & The Power of One to Heal (or Hurt)”
If you read #GodSingsBieber or God Loves Drum & Bass, you know I think it’s possible to hear/meet God in places other than “Christian” songs and circles. Since my own religious lid has been lifted, I’m free to hear *Him everywhere…
One morning my son requested San Holo’s, “Light.” We knew the artist from a passionate track, “Victory,” so were eager to play our son’s request. Thanks to #SoundCloud our car filled up with the catchy melody and tender lyrics–ringing like a longing in my own heart: “I just want to see the Light”
I guess I’m not the only one.
Continue reading ““I Just Wanna See the Light” – San Holo and The Hope of Heaven”
How can music banish a bad mood and transport us to a place where problems, cares, fear, sometimes even pain (and certainly time) don’t exist? For a moment there’s just that beat, or lyric line, or bass, or …plug in your own thing– it’s magic. I’ll be feeling down but if a song comes on that rocks, something changes–and even babies know the feeling:
Melodies can spark our spirits, balm our hearts, mirror something of our soul, and sometimes floor us. Who needs Ecstasy when some tracks are flat-out orgasmic?
And Music also heals Socially…
Just think: when we rock to the same jam, things like Race, Gender, ‘Status,’ etc., disappear. Love takes shape in a sea of people grooving. Unity, peace, joy, no fear, no shame, No Problem.
Are these Holy Moments?
Continue reading “#GodSingsBieber? Hearing God’s Heart on the Radio Aint Crazy”
How do we have the bible in every language and version (e.g. NIV, NKJV, ESV, NASB, …), study guides, teen/mom/soldier/woman/early reader styles, Comic Bibles…. and still miss the main message?
I didn’t know I owned so many bibles–granted, I’m a self-proclaimed recovering pharisee so I shouldn’t be surprised, but it wasn’t until a friend visited from a country where being Christian is a crime and her daughter longed for a bible, that I really got thinking.
Continue reading “Tower of Bible: All that “Law” but Where’s the Love?”
The world puts people in boxes: you’re female so you feel like this, you’re Christian so you think like this, you’re American so you act like that…
God likes to mix things up to help break the social/tradition walls we build between people. Just consider the movie Hidden Figures (based on a true story) where we see brilliant, computer-like brains placed in– not just black, but black, female bodies– in 1960s America. LOL, God is such a rebel…
Continue reading “If People are like Trees, Here’s to All the Weeping Willows…”
Our lives have been marked by boundaries: the boundary of the womb, the boundary of the crib, the boundary of the skies… and we push these walls, kicking against the dark in the uterus, climbing out of cribs, dreaming of flight and touching the heavens.
It seems like all boundaries–from the glass ceilings to the Berlin Walls, were meant to be destroyed…
But some of the greatest walls rest in our Hearts.
Continue reading “The Last Wall: How Our Hearts are the Last Border to Break”
