Our leaders and cultural elite have no capacity for understanding — or taking seriously — the theology and actions of militant Islam.

We distort Jacob’s life when we try to make it more than it was —a day-to-day unremarkable pattern of the ordinary.

A few years ago I heard an earnest, well-intentioned speaker present a message on the topic of the Biblical model of giving. It was the story of the widow’s mite and, as you might guess, the conclusion was we should be willing to give everything we have. I started thinking about that because I had heard almost my whole life that this story was the Biblical model for giving and, ideally, the gold standard. However, as I started looking at the different stories about giving in Scripture I realized there is a wide diversity of giving styles in Scripture — not just one. David. A leader gives leadership gifts. When…

Today we would likely label Jacob a sociopath: cunning, deceptive, detached, manipulative and ambitious. He was often cruel and incapable of being loyal. He lived by his wits - and was extremely successful.

In the evangelical community, there is still the lingering doubt that money invested in a business will not be as pleasing to God as money given away.

For Christmas, our kids gave us tickets to a Sting concert in Dallas. They know how much I like his music and how unlikely I am to spend the money to see him perform live. The whole experience was priceless, and Sting was in top form. He ended the evening by singing “Fragile,” which has become something of an anthem in times of sudden outbreaks of extraordinary violence. On the evening of September 11, 2001, Sting was scheduled to perform in Tuscany, Italy, and record his first live album in 15 years. We all remember what happened earlier in the day, which left the band wrestling with whether or not to go…

As much as anything Dad relished making and fixing things. What he really loved were the tools. He collected them partly because he needed the right tools to do the work essentially with one hand and partly because he loved working with them. He found delight in patiently figuring out the essence of a problem and then coming up with a solution that was brilliant - and incredibly ugly.

[vc_row fullwidth=”false” attached=”false” padding=”0″ visibility=”” animation=””][vc_column border_color=”” visibility=”” width=”1/1″][vc_column_text disable_pattern=”true” align=”left” margin_bottom=”0″] Happy New Year. Some of you know I enjoy taking pictures – and then finding something to say. Here are twelve from the year that I hope will provoke some thoughts. [/vc_column_text][vc_media_grid style=”all” items_per_page=”10″ element_width=”12″ gap=”10″ button_style=”rounded” button_color=”blue” button_size=”md” arrows_design=”none” arrows_position=”inside” arrows_color=”blue” paging_design=”radio_dots” paging_color=”grey” loop=”” autoplay=”-1″ item=”mediaGrid_BlurWithContentBlock” grid_id=”vc_gid:1452141965798-1fa904cf-b3a8-1″ include=”13215,13219,13214,13216,13218,13217,13220,13223,13221,13222,13224,13225″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

It has become a tradition for us to publish a poem for the Christmas blog. So much Christmas poetry has either romanticized the day or, especially in modern poetry, found despair and resignation. What I like about this poem of Wendell Berry’s is his expectancy in the ordinary. It’s unfortunate that the word “mundane” has come to mean dull and lacking interest or describing something unremarkable because so much of Wendell Berry’s writing is about the mundane. It is about this world. The daily rounds of chores and long relationships. The routines and tasks that are uneventful – at least on the surface.  But that is both the setting of this poem…

This week we heard the news that Invisible Children is shutting down, which brought back memories of founder Jason Russell’s time with us at The Gathering in 2005 – just one year after he and two friends had completed the original film. Everyone in the room at The Gathering that year was in disbelief at what these young people had done in making a documentary in a war zone in Uganda. It began as an idea to actually film the war in Darfur. The friends bought a used camera on eBay and headed to Darfur but were threatened by the Lord’s Resistance Army and were detoured to Uganda where they ended…