Well, I’ll be honest. I’m not a patient person at all, and although for some odd reason I enjoy philosophy, I’ve never had much patience for thinking about gender or theology. Gender is at once too simple and too complicated for me to dwell on. Maybe it’s too hurtful. Theology feels like navel gazing or […]
Shenandoah Nieuwsma
Not Forgetting
Growing up, I would at different times ask my mom, “what was the best time of your life?” I asked her this question repeatedly, year after year, I suppose always waiting to hear something different. Every single time, she’d reply, “well, my life is pretty good right now.” I just knew though, that there had to be another answer—I figured that the best time of her life had to be when she was a smooth-skinned twenty year old, her potential yet unhampered by kids and the weight of domesticity. Or maybe it was another time. Whatever the case, the best time of her life couldn’t be right then—why would it be? She always seemed to be eluding the question by not telling me about a time that lived on, resplendent in her memory, as the BEST time of her life.
Embarrassing generosity
Last week, Isaac preached about the dangers of coveting—of wanting to dominate the earth and its people, of craving mastery, and of being drawn in to a competition for possessions. He argued that such covetous competition objectified people and rendered them thoughtless and voiceless. The antidote to coveting, he said, was love. Love necessarily involves […]
The burden of care
When I looked over the scriptures for this week in preparation to preach, I found that the Exodus passage and the Luke passage presented an astonishing juxtaposition. The Exodus scene has God downright disgusted by the Israelites he led into the wilderness. The Israelites, perhaps out of impatience and boredom, created a golden calf to […]
You Are Mine: Love as Ownership
Today is Mother’s Day, and when I got assigned to preach on this day, I was a bit anxious. I grew up in a non-denominational, evangelical, church, and so I always expected to hear a a sermon that valorized mothers and motherhood on Mother’s Day. I felt a bit panicky because in the last six […]