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Three years ago, when pastor, seminary professor and author A.J. Swoboda’s first book Messy made its debut, I said I hoped the book would not be his last; so when a review copy of Swoboda’s second book, A Glorious Dark, arrived in the mail last week, I was like a kid on Christmas morning unwrapping…

I’m finally emerging from hibernation on my latest book project, this one now definitively titled The Recovery-Friendly Church: Loving and Ministering to People with Addictions (InterVarsity Press) and slated for release this fall. (Last week the book’s publication with IVP finally became official with the signing of a contract and after a long vetting process…

Just over six months ago, a member of our congregation announced he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer: Steve Hayner, the outgoing president of Columbia Theological Seminary, and his wife Sharol, have come to be most associated in my mind with joy; yet Steve’s announcement could not have been sadder. Still, and miraculously, over the…

Yesterday I visited a dying woman at the hospital.  I do this sort of thing pretty regularly these days as a hospice chaplain.  Her daughter was there, tearful but steady. She said her family was Christian and that they were grateful in times like these for “salvation.”  She choked up when I asked whether she…

A few days ago my grandmother died. It’s poignantly fitting that “Grandmom Peggy” made her exit from this life just before Mother’s Day. She was after all a mother to six children. I only quite recently discovered how much Grandmom Peggy genuinely loved kids. During occasional visits to the Rio Grande home that she designed,…

And what the dead had no speech for, when living They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond with the language of the living. —T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets Last night at dinner we prayed for those who died in the tornadoes here in the South and for…

The longer I live, the more I’m learning the importance of celebrating the people whose lives have touched mine—not just after they die, but when they are still alive. “Emilia Pavlovna” (as she’s been called since I sat in her first-year Russian class during my freshman year of college more than 20 years ago) is…

[Apologies for the delay in posts: technical difficulties on the heels of travel and Thanksgiving have kept me away. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Tomorrow, our series “Holy Space” recommences with photojournalist Katie Archibald-Woodward.] This past weekend I turned 38. With the advent of the late thirties, birthdays increasingly come with a tinge…

  [A correction has been made to Joyce’s age in this latest version of the post.] And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. —1 Corinthians 13:13 Right now my father-in-law is waiting at the hospital for Joyce to die. Joyce is in her early nineties, and…

Early this morning, I was just drifting off into the halcyon waters of deep sleep REM when my son woke me up to say he was scared. I was non-plussed on a third consecutive night of one or another or both of my children waking me up to tell me of their fear. Mustering up…
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