Faith

The Most Radical Demand of Christian Faith, according to Brennan Manning

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Chapter six, “Present Risenness,” in Brennan Manning’s Abba’s Child caught me offguard. The resurrection theme has been on alert to my ears for the last year. Manning’s language both challenges and refreshes. Read these highlights to experience it.

For me, the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ….This yes is an act of faith-a decisive, wholehearted response of my whole being to the risen Jesus present beside me, before me, around me, and within me.

The resurrection of Jesus must be experienced as more than a past historical event…in other words, the resurrection needs to be experienced as present risenness…If our faith is alive and luminous, we will be alert to moments, events, and occasions when the power of resurrection is brought to bear on our lives. Self-absorbed and inattentive, we fail to notice the subtle ways in which Jesus is snagging our attention.

The present risenness of Jesus as “life-giving Spirit” means that I can cope with anything. I am not on my own.

Hope knows that if great trials are avoided, great deeds remain undone, and the possibility of growth into greatness of soul is aborted. Pessimism and defeatism are never the fruit of the life-giving Spirit but rather reveal our unawareness of present risenness.

May your day flow with the life-giving Spirit of present risenness.

Liturgy of the Ordinary (book review)

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Some authors clearly are gifted writers, have a way with words, and express themselves with little effort, so it seems. Tish Harrison Warren impresses me as one.

Having not grown up in liturgical church world, her book title intrigued me. The hope that she’d make connection between what happens on Sunday to living Monday through Saturday seemed promising and refreshing. Hope found.

Our hearts and our loves are shaped by what we do again and again. -Chapter 2, Making the Bed: Liturgy, Ritual, and What Forms a Life

The weekly worship ritual has always challenged me. In comparison to my growing up years in Baptist world, I knew the song title of the next hymn just by the page number. It’s been a while, but I believe “Victory in Jesus” was #296 in our hymnal. After a couple of decades, that familiarity led to dry and rote worship for someone that it’s all they’ve known.

Warren gives purpose behind the repetition. Much like making the bed daily, our minds and spirits are formed by worship’s repetition. Chapter three expands this idea through the ongoing necessity of brushing teeth. A three-year-old doesn’t understand the why that a twenty-three-old can’t imagine questioning or stop practicing.

How should we respond when we find the Word perplexing or dry or bring or unappealing? We keep eating. We receive nourishment. We keep listening and learning and taking our daily bread. We wait on God to give us what we need to sustain us one more day. We acknowledge that there is far more wonder in this life of worship than we yet have eyes to see or stomachs to digest. We receive what has been set before us today as a gift. -Chapter 5, Eating Leftovers: Word, Sacrament, and Overlooked Nourishment

Chapters 6 and 8 held the most meaningful connections for me. Using the everyday examples of a fight with her husband and sitting in traffic, Warren basically said, “Peace, though hard work, is possible; patience, though power-producing, is pretty basic.”

I imagine the final three chapters could hold the most meaning for other readers. She paints the holiness of communion, work, and Sabbath through the strokes of calling a friend, drinking tea, and sleeping. These principles alone are worth the effort to add this book to your “to read” list.

For those who attended a liturgical service today and may have left wondering or wandering, I’d encourage you to take some time with Warren.

For those churchgoers who can’t imagine being impacted by liturgy on Sundays or any other weekday, chances are the lens your using needs adjusting. This book can help.

For those who are curious about practicing sacred living but not sure where to start, give this book a look. It may be found in the liturgy of your existing ordinary.

Facing and Being Here With Pain

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More from Mark Chironna’s “Rising With Hope” devotional

Here are three clips:

Whatever you do, do not surrender your praise or self-isolate. Lift your praises to God and allow someone in the faith whom you trust to remind you who you are. (Day 5, Facing the Unthinkable)

The hardest thing about being here, in the place of your pain, is the thought that you might be there alone. I can assure you that you aren’t. Wherever here is, He is. (Day 7, Being Here)

David said to God, “You have…put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your record?” Imagine! Your tears are so precious to God that He collects and keeps them! (Day 8, Being with Your Pain)

Seeing, Faith, and Feelings

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I’m three days into Mark Chironna’s “Rising With Hope” devotional

Here are two clips:

Sometimes you cannot see what you covered over until a crisis forces it back to the surface. Then you cannot unsee it. (Day 1, Firmly on the Edge of Hope)

Yes, you are called to live by faith rather than by sight. But faith does not ignore feelings. Faith considers feelings in the light of faith. (Day 2, Pay Attention)

Winter Olympics Lesson #1: Have Faith

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They are over. As always, lots of inspiration.

First, a few facts:

  • 93 countries participated
  • 116 events held awarding 348 medals
  • 29 countries won medals

Lots to takeaway just from those facts:

  • The athletes from the 64 countries who didn’t take home medals came with the same hopes and desires.
  • They can say they competed against the best.
  • They had faith to start and finish.

Looking at the medal tracker, I noticed the largest number of countries (6) who won the same amount of medals won just one medal. In that list was Brazil. That’s right. A Brazilian won a medal at the Winter Olympics. And it was gold.

Lucas Pinheiro Braathen of Brazil on Feb. 14, 2026
Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP via Getty

To read others more qualified to capture his story, follow these links:

https://www.aol.com/articles/skier-not-even-able-grasp-161206518.html

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/feb/14/winter-olympics-brazils-pinheiro-braathen-sambas-down-slope-for-south-americas-first-medal

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/15/nx-s1-5715075/brazil-braathen-gold-south-americas-first-winter-olympics-medal

Reading Lucas’s quotes following his historic accomplishment, this one said it best:

“It’s a moment that’s hard to grasp, even though it’s crystal clear that you are officially the Olympic champion. Even though I had such faith and I knew that this was written for me, it is still so incredible to live that dream turned reality. I couldn’t quite grasp it.”

Faith.

  • That you were created for a purpose
  • That you can represent what it looks like to pursue that purpose
  • That following your faith can be inspirational to others

We won’t all be Olympians. Yet, we all have purpose…that can be pursued…that requires faith…that can inspire others.

Forgive Them…They Don’t Know Who They Are

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On the way home from church a couple of hours ago, the radio DJ talked about the parenting challenges of getting kids ready in the morning, particularly families who go to church on Sunday.

She said it’s natural for the parent to get frustrated with their “uncooperative” child and ask, “Why are they giving me a hard time?” She suggested parents reframe both their minds and the situation by saying, “They aren’t giving me a hard time; they are having a hard time.”

Guess what? This isn’t only about parent child relationships. This seems to apply to a vast number of relationships.

The “giving me a hard time” framework easily leads to frustration, arguments, harsh and regretful words, anger, and potentially complete breakdown. Then comes the work, if chosen, of forgiveness.

When I consider society’s landscape, it’s in need of mounds of forgiveness. Ideally, parties in any conflict would reach this conclusion together and pursue it. From my experience, that’s not a realistic expectation. If I’m desiring forgiveness to start, I have to take the lead.

I’ve been in awe for years of Jesus’ words when he was dying, “Forgive them. They know not what they do.” In this line of thinking recently, I’ve found it useful to reframe that prayer to something like, “Forgive them. They don’t know who they are.”

Those words are not from an elitist, judging, or dismissing wrongdoing view. I believe many people who are hurting others are doing so while they are trying to answer their own questions. Often in blindness. Often in the comfort of what they know. Often in ways that seem right, based on an unchallenged view of themselves and their world.

Like the parent who has to find a way to church with a hurting child in tow, I have to find a way to be present with those who don’t know who they are. Why? I am one of them. I continue to realize how I didn’t know who I was in relationship to others, even in the last year. And many of them forgave me, often without me knowing it.

The power of forgiveness seems immeasurable. I’m working on giving it as much as I’ve received it. Especially to those having a hard time. They’re figuring out who they are.

Hard, Shadowy Love

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(A final word from Paul E. Miller’s book A Loving Life)

Part three, “Learning To Think in Love,” contains the most challenging yet helpful direction, particularly chapter 19. In describing discovering God on the journey of love, Miller digs into two main thoughts: the shadowy presence of God in our lives and the need to embrace the hard things in life to live out love.

God’s presence in the book of Ruth mirrors his presence in our lives. It is subtle. He doesn’t leap out like he did with Moses and the plagues in Egypt. If God regularly showed himself like he did at the Red Sea or the resurrection, there would be no room for relationship…By staying in the shadows, at the edge of the story, God creates the need for faith and thus intimacy. The hiddenness of God builds our faith muscles.

A practical illustration of how we live this out is in conversations. Living in the shadows looks like staying small, deliberately on the edge so others can emerge and come alive facilitated by our humility.

Not easy. Particularly in conflict or when things aren’t going as planned or expected. Ruth and Naomi’s journey was filled with hard.

Ruth discovers God and his blessing as she obeys, as she submits to the life circumstances that God has given her. So instead of running from the really hard thing in your life, embrace it as a gift from God to draw you into his life.

May we discover God on our 2026 journey of love.

Photo by Semyon Borisov on Unsplash

Painting the Messiah’s Entrance

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Christmas 2024 led me to encounter an Advent Christian worship event for the first time. I found it meaningful enough to find others to attend this month. Between the two seasons, I actually went to four of them. They are called Blue Christmas services.

A Blue Christmas service, also called a Longest Night Service, is a Christian worship event during Advent (around Dec 21st) offering comfort and hope for those struggling with grief, loss, loneliness, or pain during the holidays, acknowledging sorrow alongside traditional Christmas joy through prayer, scripture, reflection, music, and candle lighting to find light in darkness. (AI overview)

Each of the four services were unique, largely due to denominational (Lutheran, Methodist, Metropolitan Community, and nondenominational) practices. All left me feeling like the clergy took the service to heart and were not going through motions. As one feels when they allow their grief to be seen and acknowledged, I left each service lighter.

The Lutheran service I attended this December 21st actually left me with joy. Besides the pastor, I was most likely the youngest person of the roughly 30 attendees. These senior saints embraced their faith with such passion that any grief in the room was lifted and hope was offered as a replacement. One particular singer, George, made me smile. I’m guessing he was in his 80s. I will remember his singing for a long time.

The prior Wednesday I attended the service at Church of the Trinity. The intention and detail of that service caught me by surprise. Close to half of the service was interactive. Not in a pushy or uncomfortable expectation, but in a welcoming and inviting sense of togetherness. The team of four ministers served their people in these ways:

  • Holding them
  • Providing space for personal choices
  • Leading by example
  • Leading by going first
  • Walking alongside
  • Not rushing
  • Being with
  • Inviting all to participate

One quote was shared in the opening remarks that said something like this:

Grief is the transitioning from pain and loss to hope and light.

As we all left, it seemed heavy hearts had been emptied, grim faces were now smiling, and tears were turned to singing.

I’m thankful to have found these traditions. Makes me wonder if they don’t paint an equally vivid reminder of the Messiah’s entrance into our world.

The Wisdom of Stability, Part 2-Midday Demons (book review)

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The following chapter in Hartgrove’s book warns, “Buckle Up!”

After encouraging nurturing roots of love, he immediately offers that you can expect spiritual challenges. His first reference retells the story of the desert monastics’ “describing the ‘noonday devil’ who attacks after one commits to stay and begins to feel the heat of high noon.”

This is where the book’s subtitle, “Rooting Faith in a Mobile Culture,” gets highlighted. To stay, to root, to pursue stability “against the seas of constant change makes us susceptible to temptations we would not otherwise have occasion to know.”

The practice of stability cannot be reduced to a quick fix for the spiritual anxiety of a placeless people. It is a process. It takes time…To persevere in the process that leads to real growth, we must learn to name and resist the midday demons.

These are the three midday demons:

  • Ambition’s Whisper
  • Boredom’s Rut
  • Vainglory’s Delusion

I’m quite familiar with the first two. They often show face at high noon. Hartgrove offers several countermoves to these temptations focused on both spirit and body including physical activity, engaging community, and dying well.

This book, available on hoopla and an easy weekend read, is worthwhile. If you only read chapters four and five of this book, you will be enriched. However much you read, you’ll find yourself wiser and pondering your stability.

Photo by 光曦 刘 on Unsplash

Keep Looking

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Father

I looked for you today

In the drizzling rain

In the psalmist’s lyrics

In a believer’s curiosity

In a mourner’s heartbreak

Son

I looked for you today

In a partner’s forgiveness

In an artist’s healing

In a woman’s pain

In a dreamer’s frustration

Spirit

I looked for you today

In a grandpa’s tears

In a friend’s question

In a pastor’s story

In a buyer’s decision

There you were

Everywhere saying, “Keep Looking”

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash