Advent: Clearing a Path for Christmas
by Mary Beth Pollema
…r focus so that we may rightfully acknowledge the deep significance of the com ing of our Messiah. With our hearts well prepared, we engage in many of the other activities of the season that also point us on this path, but we need to be wary of those that distract us from attending to the internal work of the Spirit that has eternal consequences. So with these thoughts in mind, our family is preparing for Christmas by asking these questions : • What…
Dear Parents of College Freshmen
by Kim Brinkerhoff
…am towards the future, but we are only afforded living in the present to accomplish both. Consider it an immense privilege to encourage your student as they walk through these unfamiliar changes. College should be a com munity set up to support and equip them for academic and lifestyle success: not just to survive, but to thrive. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.I Corint…
Our Favorite Podcasts from 2017
by Liz Moss
…ear? What podcasts would you recommend to the readers of iAt? Leave your recommendations in the com ments. 99% Invisible–“all about the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about” Slate’s Culture Gabfest–Listen to Slate’s critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner, plus their guests, discuss what’s happening in movies, books, TV, and more. Embedded–Host Kelly McEvers takes a story from the news and goes deep. Filmspotting–“…
What I Have Learned From My Ambivalent Career Path
by Dan Beerens
…on related to religion in public schools. I hoped I would be able to raise com pelling questions with students about the meaning of life, but I felt integrity demanded a neutral approach that did not subvert my conditions of employment. • I found myself frustrated by not being able to verbally express what was in my heart. A climactic experience for me as an administrator was getting a police report that one of our elementary students had been inju…
by Katlyn DeVries
…ign in the end, but what does that mean for the innocent victims now? What com fort does that bring to their families? Where does that leave us in this moment? This text raises all these questions for us, but it leaves us with few answers. We don’t understand why Naboth had to die. We don’t know if he had family, or what happened to them. It seems senseless, and we can’t figure out why God would let that happen. However, what we do know is that God…
People of Goodwill? Race, Lukewarm Acceptance, and the Christian Reformed Church
by Mark T. Mulder
…vironment in which racialization and the racial caste system festers and becomes ever-more insidious. Even in their lukewarm acceptance, people of goodwill can be com plicit. Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 122. ↩ Acts of Synod, 1957 (Grand Rapids, MI: CRC Board of Publications, 1957), p. 20. ↩ Acts of Synod, 1968, p. 19. ↩ M…
by Liz Moss
…or and their disregard for the Lord. In their distraction of waiting, they com pletely missed the point and for got who their God was, and is, and will always be. Sometimes when the Lord speaks, it may make our ears tingle, too. We hear a call to an obedient life of following Jesus, to take up our cross daily to follow him. We hear the Lord com mand us to make our lives a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to him. We are called to turn from our si…
by JP Sundararajan
…ce of travail. These things fill my heart constantly. This is India. It is com plicated, it is beautiful, and it is who I am. I did not see India this way until I left it. In fact, I learned much of my knowledge about India during my time in NW Iowa, and therein lies a truth for me—and, I believe, for all of us. Often, you must leave something to really know it intimately. I love bringing my bi-racial and bi-cultural children to India. I love walki…
Descartes’s Doll: Christianity and the Myth of A.I.
by Michael Plato
…h no further use) once discarded. The mind is something more than advanced com putations. We need to hear robots saying “I am a person” because we are secretly afraid that we ourselves are fleshly robots and nothing more. In an era when we are being dehumanized at an alarming rate through abortion, euthanasia, and pornography (as well as com modification and consumerism), it is to the robot that we look to affirm our humanity, our mystery, our immat…
A Letter to a First Year Teacher
by Crystal Strickland
…at their lowest moments. Listen first. Listen to people’s stories. Ask questions to better understand where they are com ing from. Put yourself in their shoes and try to understand why they see situations the way that they do, even when you don’t agree. This is when you will grow the most. When people share their experiences with you, believe them! Take them at their word; it will help you connect with them and gain knowledge from their perspec…
by Sam Leverton
…Please don’t kick me out.” So we strive. We push ourselves to do and to become. But what happens when doing and becoming wears you out? What happens when you’ve done all you can do and still aren’t who you hoped you’d be? It won’t be long until you find that you’ve filled your schedule so tightly with doing that you don’t like who you’re becoming– anxious, obsessed, prideful and insecure. There is, however, a way to become without getting overwhe…
McSupper or Lord’s Supper?
by Mark Verbruggen
…knowing the Gospel, we com e to his table. In the words of Daniel Schutte’s Com munion Hymn: “Com e to feast of heaven and earth! Com e to the table of plenty! God will provide for all that we need, here at the table of plenty…O com e and sit at my table where saints and sinners are friends. I wait to welcome the lost and lonely to share the cup of my love. My bread will ever sustain you through days of sorrow and woe. My wine will flow like a sea of g…
Searching for the Presence of God
by Dave Schelhaas
…us?” Jesus must be remembering Isaiah 58 when he says to those whom he welcomes into his kingdom (recorded in Matthew 25): “I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a refugee and you welcomed me into your home; I needed clothes and you clothed me; I was sick and you looked after me; I was in prison and you visited me…Don’t you see? When you did these things to my people, you were really doing them to me.” Do you w…
How Teaching Has Changed in the Last 36 Years
by Ed Starkenburg
…ays, we’re still trying to accomplish the same thing. The preparation to become a teacher is more rigorous now than when I graduated from college in 1980 with a degree in elementary education. At that time, you had required courses to pass along with successful com pletion of 12 weeks of student teaching. I often tell my students today that in those “good old days,” almost anyone could be a teacher because all you had to do was pass the courses and…
by Emily Rowe
…is magic in the mundane.” -Justin Bailey “While SBTB was certainly mostly com edic escape, the sitcom did provide some level of com plex adolescent thought as they highlighted social problems, relationship struggles, and the importance of friendships. The show provided a good dose of both humor and seriousness. SBTB certainly shaped me and my peers in both positive and negative ways. It shaped our expectations, but also allowed us to keep a certain…
Teaching Our Children About Money
by John Baas
…d, the optimistic yet constantly indebted Mr. Micawber observes, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” Our children don’t need to learn com plex rules of investing as much as they need to learn the simple lesson of being content by living within one’s means. Choices have consequences. One of th…
by Dawn Berkelaar
…r the needed quality of a homeschool alternative. Especially if the church com es through in com munal style and in keeping with it’s side of the baptismal covenant vows, “economic reasons” should not factor into the decision at all IMHO. Dr. Douglas De Boer Here is one more factor to consider in the decision to homeschool: Christian parents who baptize their children usually vow to, “instruct these children by word and exam ple, with the help of the…
Faith, Politics, and Social Media
by Dave Mulder
…certain beliefs can never serve as a full and humane identity. When they become focused on maximizing division I doubt they can even produce solutions to the problems our public policies must address. For this reason I’ve chosen to ignore the two party system of mutual reaction and recrimination as much as possible. It is a cesspool of moral, intellectual and spiritual toxins. Regrettably among Christians and in churches there is sometimes even le…
Strengths and Shadows: Using the Enneagram in the Classroom
by Justin Bailey
…an invitation to do some soul work, with a skilled helper and in Christian com munity. Third, while knowing the various types can help cultivate empathy for others (especially in a family or when working on a team), there is always the temptation is to “weaponize” it towards others (especially in a family or when working on a team!) Overall, I consider the Enneagram to be a tool primarily meant for self-diagnosis and soul search ing. It should not b…
by Jonathan De Groot
…e medium is the message.” In other words, the manner in which we choose to com municate shapes us more than the content found within the medium. Today, our com munication mediums are instant, convenient, and customized. If we want food, sex, money, or popularity, we have immediate pacifiers in fast food chains, convenience stores, Viagra, pornography, credit cards, instant loan centers, Facebook likes, and Twitter feeds. People used to journal; now…
Our Call to Welcome the Stranger
by Kate Kooyman
…lieve that we are a people who, like Abraham, are called to extravagant welcome as our primary identity. We serve a God who points us to an abundant life. And maybe that’s not a safe life, or a com fortable life, or a life that makes no demands on us. But if we have learned anything from Scripture, it’s that this God loves to hide the good news of that abundant life in the face of a stranger. In the face of an “angel,” though we are unaware. In the…
Hillary Clinton and Progressive Civil Religion
by Kristin Kobes du Mez
…n the 1950s, Hillary attended the Methodist Church in her upscale suburban com munity of Park Ridge, IL. Both of her parents were devout Methodists, but they understood their faith in different ways. Her father, a gruff and emotionally distant figure in Hillary’s life, was a “self-made” businessman who privileged individualism and self-reliance. His politics followed suit; he was a stalwart Republican and ardent anti-com munist. Her mother, however,…
by James Calvin Schaap
…“a tragically false religion that played a significant role in what we’ve com e to call, simply, Wounded Knee.” She said, “Jim, why did you call it a ‘false’ religion?” She was, and is, a deeply com mitted Christian, but her question rattled me deeply and still does. “Why of course it was “a false religion,” I told myself. “What is she thinking? She knows better.” But her question com es to mind again when I think about Pentecost—not because the fre…
by Aaron Baart
…in someone else’s shoes. Imagine a visitor, speaking a different language, com ing into your com munity and maybe even your home and then doing a menial job that you could easily do yourself. Weird, isn’t it? Actually, it’s insulting. 5. Transformation. A short-term mission trip should always be seeking the goal of long-term transformation. Moreover, that transformation is more about you than it is about them. I would hope that every short-term miss…
by Kevin Timmer
…al currents are eroding our closest relationships and with them, Christian com munity, including our families. It is now rare for families to find time to eat together because it is “normal” to be too busy. So while our iPhones and other technologies are not, in themselves, destroying our relationships, it is critical to remember that they com e with biases that are, in concert with the surrounding cultural patterns, trying to pull us away from each…
