Family, Dirt-Bikes, and Education
by Liz Moss
…car windows were lowered. And , the looks on the faces of my seven and five-year-old were made of pure joy. The warm wind hit their faces as they sang along to a song we have listened to more times than I can count. And , although life can have its challenges in our life of raising two very different boys with two very different personalities, at that moment, all the struggles seemed to melt away. Life was at peace. Moments like this make my heart…
Hospitality in Higher Education: Is There Room for All?
by Christina Edmondson
…Jesus’s powerful teaching in Matthew 22:36–40: “Teacher, which is the greatest com mandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first com mandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two com mandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” The law of love hangs on two com mands that place the…
Socially Thirsty: Creating Families Connected Outside of Social Media
by Tara Boer
…pted by short advertisements while watching TV. As an adult raised in a pre-com puter and pre-internet era, I know that these 60-80 second timed advertisements that occur when streaming live cable is nothing com pared to the series of com mercial interruptions I once experienced when we sat down to watch TV on Friday evenings with our heavy wooden TV. Our kids can hardly believe that there was a time when we needed to be physically present in the roo…
3 Reasons Why I Take the Church Year Journey
by April Fiet
…into the mystery of the birth of Jesus without all the pressure of the gift-giving and party-planning that dominates most of the month of December. The days following Christmas Day have become a gift that I treasure. Sundays like Trinity Sunday and Transfiguration Sunday bring mystery back into my life. As a person who loves seeking answers (and spends a lot of time reading and looking things up), I need to be reminded again and again that I canno…
Testimony: Being a Minority at Dordt
by Harry Lee
…e for maybe overgeneralizing, but Dordt College appears to be somewhat mono-ethnic and mono-cultural. I see a lot of Dutch people around here. I love Dutch people. Being a minority is rough. No matter how interactive my personality may be, I cannot fully express myself–I cannot connect as much as I think. This sometimes lets on to self-rebuke and low self-esteem. Believe me, I’m not the worst of the Koreans; most feel even worse. Many of the inter…
A Floating Feather of Grace: A Review of Reading Buechner
by April Fiet
…between the book pages, where it swayed and trembled from the flow of air com ing from my car vents. While this feather may seem insignificant, it made its appearance right as I was reading Monroe’s insightful connection between Buechner’s writing and the question of the floating feather in the movie For rest Gump. Is everything in our life left up to chance, or is there meaning and purpose behind the things that happen? Perhaps it is a bit of both…
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by Jeff Ploegstra
Daily Scripture Texts Psalm 1-5:1-6, 16-22, 45b Genesis 37:1-3, 12-28 Romans 10:5-15 Matthew 14:22-23 “I’m not sure I consider myself a Christian anymore,” a friend of mine softly declared while sitting on a couch in my living room in Sioux Center. He was moving across the country and had stopped by for the evening to catch up. It became clear as the conversation progressed that he had become disillusioned with the church and felt alienated and i…
by Dawn Berkelaar
…boundaries, and engagement.”5 Toward that end, consider the following: Self-com passion com bats perfectionism. Brown com ments, “…if we want free dom from perfectionism, we have to make the long journey from ‘What will people think?’ to ‘I am enough.’”6 One way to do this is to cultivate self-com passion: be kind to yourself; recognize that others struggle, too, and be mindful—acknowledge painful feelings without letting them take over. Accepting that…
A Journey Towards Diversity: A Review of The Next Worship
by John MacInnis
…A question not real ly considered here concerns how a church musician may become multi-musical, able to collaborate and create with various musical styles. Where does that training happen and how is it done well? Similarly, Van Opstal does not explore what com bination of experience in popular, folk, and classical music styles and instruments provide the best purchase for multi-musical work in our churches today. This is a missed opportunity to addr…
Discipleship and Narrative Metaphor
by Donald Roth
…guide to what sorts of roles those people play when they have to do the day-to-day improvisation of acting out love for God and neighbor. In studying this subject over the past few years, I’ve com e to theorize that there are in fact about eight major narrative metaphors when it com es to discipleship: Exiles – Associate d strongly with Judah in Babylonian Exile. Pilgrims – Associate d with the yearning for and journey to Zion, ideas which are particu…
Friendship and the Power of Holiness
by Aimee Byrd
…ist although we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!” (Eph. 2:1-2, 5-6). All those who turn to Christ in repentance are filled with his Holy Spirit so that we are no longer under the reign of sin, but the reign of grace. The bodies of believers are no longer ruled by sin (Rom. 6:6). We are called to live to God (Rom. 6:10). And we are called into a covenant com munity of believers. God’s church is God’s household (1 Tim. 3:15). God’s Mi…
by Ross Douma
…e from all avenues of life who struggled with their humanness is even more com forting. Numerous stories are chronicled in the New Test ament where Jesus went against the social norm to reach out to struggling individuals. Like the birth of our Savior, this newness needs to still be played out today by Christians as we seek to restore a broken world Christ was born into and died for . Furthermore, as struggles continue to transpire in the Middle East…
by Hannah Buteyn
…watched each of them—twice. Imagine my surprise when we came to the second-to-last episode of season 6 (for the second time), and I noticed that one of the semifinalists is missing most of her fingers on her left hand. I had never noticed! I had spent hours watching close-ups of her hands, never understanding the true skill this baker possessed. Upon real izing this, I exclaimed, “I wonder how many other things in my life I never even notice!” My…
Visual Art: Cultivating Christian Viewers
by David Versluis
…ttle differences all fitting in together.4 Carl Sandburg once wrote in his Com plete Poems that, “Poetry is the open ing and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.” With this passage in mind, it takes a certain kind of humility to view an artwork by not “reading into it,” but better yet, taking time to cultivate a process of “drawing out” the significance of the artwork. Dig Deeper Interested i…
by Hannah Barker Nickolay
Daily Scripture Texts Psalm 146 Isaiah 60:17-22 Matthew 9:27-34 I “breath departs” Thousands of years of people com ing and going— rulers and their subjects, lords and their servants, mothers, fathers, cousins, little sisters, bakers, garbage men, writers, pastors, tyrants, saints, you, and me. No matter the breadth of our thoughts, the reach of our words, the might of our deeds, our breath one day departs, and we fade like the snow in spring. The…
by Josh Matthews
…n relations. Thankfully, Banks’ preference for the nuances of language and open -ended interpretation com bat militaristic paranoia. This is perhaps the movie’s greatest hope. Arrival quotes liberally from the most influential of all SF movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). But the surprise is that it also quotes, and even seems to prefer, a more recent rebuke to 2001: Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011). At first, the alien ships resemble a m…
A Walk Through the Poem: “Believing Green” by Christian Wiman
by Shelbi Gesch
…jackrabbits locked in black. From her I learned the earthworm’s exemplary open -mindedness, its engine of discriminate shit. From her I learned all the nuances of neverness that link the gladiola to God. How gone she must be, graveless maybe, who felt the best death would be for friends to eat you, whose last name I never even knew: dirt-rich mouse-proud lady who Rubied me into a life so starred and laughtered there was no need for after. First, l…
Gratitude and Good Intentions
by Leah Zuidema
…saving grace, to tell the story of Jesus and his love. I lose sight of the real drama: the incomprehensible story of the Creator of the universe, rescuing us by becoming one of us and dwelling among us, giving us life by conquering death, making all things new. Simply resolving to be more thankful doesn’t work. Despite my best intentions, I quickly for get, and instead fret after the desires of my sinful heart. It’s a rare day that thankfulness spr…
by Todd Zuidema
…tionals can be an aid or can help us learn, but we should also learn to be com fortable with real ly reading Scripture—big chunks, chapters, and books in one reading—rather than just a verse or two and then a page of a devotional. I am convinced that reading and hearing God’s Word changes us. Leaders, in following the pattern of the king in Deuteronomy, should not be strangers to that Word. Set aside the time. Give yourself the space. Sit down and b…
Political Advocacy for Immigration Reform is a Marathon not a Sprint
by Harold Heie
…of their constituents. A case in point is my own experience in talking face-to-face with an elected law enforcement officer or two about the possibility of their supporting legislation to provide temporary driver’s licenses for all immigrants, documented or undocumented. In addition to the benefits such licenses would provide for immigrants who need a way to get to work and for enabling their families to get to stores, churches, and medical appoin…
The Death of Kobe Bryant: Fallen Icons and Heart of Popular Culture
by Justin Bailey
…um. And part of being a fan is having heroes. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’ com ment: “to love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin.” Kobe’s legacy may be com plicated, but there is something profound about the outpouring of grief and loss (and even repentance) that it has produced. People experience deep meaning, even deep magic in the lives and deaths of their heroes, imperfect as they may be. If w…
Only a Stubborn Past Can Survive: A Review of The Nickel Boys
by Myles Werntz
…eed which gets him sent to the Nickel Academy—a fictional analogue for the real -life horrors of the Dozier School. At the Nickel, Curtis is befriended by Turner, a fellow black “student” whose approach differs from the optimism of King; he cares more about survival. Both white and black boys are sent to the Nickel, with the white students receiving beatings and suffering alongside their black counterparts. However, what occurs there is still a mic…
Reflections on Prayer in a Time of Panic
by Kayt Frisch
…meetings, like church, are not happening, and there are rumors of a shelter-in-place order com ing from the Mayor. The fear is everywhere. It’s easy for me to do the same thing as everyone else (panic). It’s how we’re wired. Fight or flight. In this case, I’d rather flee. But I can’t, because it’s real and the pandemic isn’t in a faraway country, it’s in my city. Facing our mortality—and lack of control—is scary. For tunately, as Christ-followers we…
by Jeff Ploegstra
…those affected by these disorders is profound. Hemophilia runs in my sister-in-law’s family. Both her father and uncle contracted HIV and later died of AIDS after using clotting factor extracted from contaminated human blood. Her son, however, has no risk of ever contracting HIV or other bloodborne illnesses from the clotting factor he uses because it is produced by hamster cells in cell culture. People tend to think that this creation of transgen…
