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The Torch and Oven: A Christmas Story You Didn’t Hear

Christmas is a time to enjoy cozy lights, sweet treats, and Dutch gezelligheid – a wonderful word without pure translation, but roughly: nice/comfy/friendly/cozy- ness.

Some think of “baby Jesus,” or making everything just right, and still others wish to fast forward through the season. Holidays can be painful for some so I want to share a verse I’ve never heard at Christmastime which may give hope, especially to any who’ve ever been oppressed. Or maybe it gives more perspective beyond the baby in a manger.

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If God Was a Bear: “Brave” & Rebelling from Love

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.

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Social Justice or Sodomy? The Real Reason Sodom Burned

When did two people getting married become a bad thing?
When did consenting adults committing to a life of love and faithfulness together become something to mobilize against– by people professing a doctrine founded on unconditional love??!

There’s much judgement and hate directed towards those with a homosexual or bisexual lifestyle, and those identifying as transgender have recently been called out of Armed Service, cruelly (e.g. via twitter), and without genuine cause, despite each of these people writing blank checks to Uncle Sam payable up and unto their very lives.

Secretary of Defense Matthis urging Soldiers across all Branches to “Hold the Line” as America gets it’s act together…

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God like Lightning: Are You Doing the Zig Zag Too?

Why doesn’t Lightning come down straight? It’s ferocious and 5x hotter than the surface of the sun, so shouldn’t it just, literally, charge down?

I never gave lightning much thought until I heard a Capital Kings track, Forever. One lyric line, “I feel Your Lightning in my veins,” touched something in my heart and I was inspired to find lightning wallpaper for my phone. As I admired it, I realized how much lightening looks like our veins…

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When Hate is Acceptable and Love becomes Laughable– Do We Know God? [Biblical Danger Zone]

Remember Claude Frollo? That gypsy (foreigner)-hating, child-manipulating and emotionally-abusing, lust-possessed, uber-religious Judge from Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame? That man prayed. A Lot. Remember him pouring out his heart in the dark song “hell fire–desire”? (Yes, not all kids movies are for kids).

How many Frollo’s, to varying degrees, do you know? How many have we caught glimpse of since the US election?

Going to church doesnt make you a christian like being in a garage makes you a car

If this election has done anything for us, it’s certainly put a magnifying glass on the blinding hate that can reside in hearts of those who wear crosses or call themselves Christian.

Maybe that’s why Jesus Himself is getting a new name (Revelation 3:12), and why he was the angriest in a Church, NOT some city square (Matthew 21:12).

Before the US election, I heard many Christian-identifying Americans say: “this is a difficult decision…”

Difficult?  Do we know God?

Continue reading “When Hate is Acceptable and Love becomes Laughable– Do We Know God? [Biblical Danger Zone]”

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Tower of Bible: All that “Law” but Where’s the Love?

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?

love-your-neighbor-as-your-self-even-if-they-are-lgbtq-or-refugee-or-muslim-or
Translation: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Jesus) “And if they are a refugee or gay?”… or Muslim or Mexican, or Republican….?  Jesus: “Is there something wrong with your ears?”

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.

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If People are like Trees, Here’s to All the Weeping Willows…

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…

Hidden_Figures_movie still
Still from “Hidden Figures,” based on the untold true story of the women nobody knew behind the NASA mission everyone knew..  “Genius has no race.. Strength has no gender…”

Continue reading “If People are like Trees, Here’s to All the Weeping Willows…”