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By Scott Cairns Your petitions—though they continue to bear just the one signature—have been duly recorded. Your anxieties—despite their constant, relatively narrow scope and inadvertent entertainment value—nonetheless serve to bring your person vividly to mind. Your repentance—all but obscured beneath a burgeoning, yellow fog of frankly more conspicuous resentment—is sufficient. Your intermittent concern for the sick, the suffering, the needy poor is sometimes recognizable to me, if not to them. Your angers, your zeal, your lipsmackingly righteous indignation toward the many whose habits and sympathies offend you—     these must burn away before you’ll apprehend how near I am, with what fervor I adore precisely these, the several who rouse your passions. taken from The Advent Project by Biola University

“If she only knew…” Those words punctuated Rob’s address at Love146’s Red Gala last month, referencing the girl who bore the number 146 on her red dress. Sitting at the gala, chills ran down my spine thinking about our namesake. If she only knew that we wore red that evening in solidarity with her. Red symbolized a girl halfway around the world who will probably never know we exist. She will probably never know Rob picked up the defiance shining in her eyes to fight on her behalf. But what if someday she does know? We may not see resolution this side of eternity but someday, someday she will know. That will be a glorious day.

A few thoughts that caught my attention watching an archive of the opening session from IHOP-KC's Women's Conference. Dana Candler was the speaker and heard God prompting her: "The next season of your life is not titled, 'And Dana became a mom.' The next season of your life is titled, 'And Dana grew in love.'" ... "As I'm feeding [my son] lunch, I heard the Lord say, 'you know, I had a mother.' And all of a sudden that room became holy and I realized, 'of course you did, Jesus! And You actually have this really tender place in Your heart for mothers and You want to encounter me here and maybe I'm all locked away and no one else sees but You're actually taking notes; You're writing it down.'" ~Dana Candler, Unwavering Conference, 3/30/17

If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall; this is the physics of vulnerability. When we commit to showing up and risking  falling, we are actually committing to falling. Daring is not saying, "I'm willing to risk failure." Daring is saying, "I know I will eventually fail and I'm still all in." ~ Bren é  Brown, Rising Strong

This morning, I dazedly checked my phone and read, "I love you today and all days," written by a dear friend. At first, those words confused me then their meaning came into sharp relief, knocking me out of my sleepy stupor. Today is a special day in my family's history. It is the day my brother, Tim, came into the world. Today we celebrate his birthday even as he has "promoted" to heaven, as Mom says. This year, we'll gather with close friends, light a Christmas tree on fire in the backyard, love on Tim's son and wife, raise a glass, and share Tim stories. Tim was my adventure pal. There are precious few with whom I'd run a marathon, attempt a high altitude pass that had turned back most others, and ski off cornices. These adventures, respectively, led to 1) a vow that we'd never run another marathon, 2) determining to persevere in the face of altitude sickness, and 3) my ski boot breaking as I landed off the cornice. Just envisioning each of t...

Before nap time, we read. Today's book retold the story of a black slave who mailed himself to freedom. While it provided an opportunity to talk about historical and modern day abolition with my daughter, one line stopped me in my tracks. "Henry's [slave] master had been good to Henry and his family." I thought, "this must have been written by a white person. No black person would dream of calling a slaveholder good." Sure enough, the author is white. (The talented artist is black but that's a separate conversation). Why do we, as white people, feel the need to sanitize the past, rendering it patently false? Is it white guilt? Is it our inability to confront how truly devastating historical American slavery was? Moreover, I wonder what this means for our perspective as whites on current racial tensions in America. Do we still try to sanitize what we see rather than confront latent racism for the devastation it continues to be? Perhaps the author w...