There are some chapters in the Bible that people do not come to with open hands. They come guarded. They come tense. They come already expecting a fight. First Timothy 2 is one of those chapters. Many people hear its name and think of arguments before they think of prayer. They think of controversy before…

There is something deeply troubling about the human race, and most of us know it even if we do not say it out loud very often. We are capable of tenderness, beauty, invention, sacrifice, poetry, and compassion, yet we are also capable of turning on each other with frightening ease. In all of God’s creation,…

There are some chapters in the Bible that do not feel like distant instruction at all. They feel personal. They feel close enough to touch. They feel like they know exactly what kind of world we live in and exactly what kind of battles happen inside a human being. First Timothy 1 is one of…

There are moments in life when the hardest part is not only what you are feeling. The hardest part is what starts talking to you right after you feel it. Your thoughts begin to feel messy. Your peace begins to slip. Your mind feels louder than usual. You try to settle down, but the more…

There are moments in history that do not merely influence what comes next. They divide time. They split human understanding into a before and an after. They arrive with such force that the world that existed only moments earlier can never fully return. Christianity has one of those moments on a road outside Damascus, and…

There are moments in life that do not arrive with warning. They do not send a letter ahead of time. They do not knock politely and ask whether you are ready. They simply fall on you in the middle of an ordinary day, in the middle of a quiet room, in the middle of a…

There are questions people are sometimes afraid to ask out loud because they worry the question itself will sound disrespectful, immature, or too raw to belong in a spiritual conversation. This is one of those questions. Does God listen to the Pope more than you? Beneath that question is something even more personal. Does God…

Most people have been taught, in one way or another, that God lives somewhere else. Even when they would never say those exact words out loud, that is still how they often feel inside. They feel like God is in the church they have not attended enough, in the Bible they have not read enough,…