Midnight Moments

As we ring in a New Year, I'm sure most of us have resolutions we've made and goals we've set to achieve in 2012.  As we evaluate the year that has passed I challenge you to not just celebrate the blessings and achievements, but do some serious spiritual inventory and see where you need to surrender to God.  Is it control over finances or circumstances?  Is it bad attitudes or bitterness? Is is stubbornness or pride?  What is it that's keeping you from experiencing God in an incredible way this coming year?  What is it that's holding you back from impacting the world for the Kingdom of Heaven? Something I've noticed more profoundly in recent days, in myself and believers around me, is a sense of entitlement.  Too many Christians have fallen prey to the American ideal that individuals are "entitled" to anything that makes them happy.  Now, I'm not saying God doesn't want us to be happy, but that is not his ultimate purpose for us.  I believe G...

Spending Christmas back with my family in New York is always an interesting experience after four years of college in Indiana and living the last 3 years in Kentucky.  Saying Merry Christmas is apparently taboo. Even telling sales clerks "Merry Christmas" you're bound to get a dry "Happy Holidays" in response.  And the act of Christmas shopping in general is a bit audacious in lieu of the real purpose of Christmas: to celebrate the birth of Christ.  Sure, historically He most likely wasn't born in December, but December 25th is the traditional day chosen by the Church universal to remember the occasion.  And how do we celebrate it?  By storming down old ladies to get Tickle-Me-Elmo's and training kids from the age of 1 to be materialistic and self centered. Now, this is clearly an overstatement, but I think most of you get the gist of my argument.  Christ has been lost from Christmas.  It's become about marketing and materialism.  And even for tho...

Hypocrisy is always a big reason, or excuse, that people give for why they don't go to church.  Now, I'm not going to try to defend the Christian Church and say that we aren't riddled with hypocrisy because I won't win that arguement.  Reality is unfortunately that Christians don't always practice what they preach.  Another reality is that hypocrisy is not unique to the Church or Christians.  It is unique, however, to humanity.  And that's what this blog is specifically about. So, you won't set foot in the door of a church because of hypocrites.  What about the hypocrites in the workplace?  What about the hypocrites in your family?  What about the hypocrites in public office?  What about the hypocrites in the media and Hollywood?  What is it about the Church that people are so quick to jump on their hypocrisy, but much more willing to ignore the hypocrisy in other arenas to a lesser degree? To those who call themselves Christians, an...

In Luke 2: 21-38, Mary and Joseph take their 8 day old son Jesus to the temple to be circumcised.  Among those at the temple are Simeon and Anna. Simeon and Anna (who was a prophetess) had been waiting their whole lives for the Messiah. Both were near the end of their lives, but God had promised them they would live to see the Messiah.  When they saw the tiny baby Jesus, they both instantly knew who He was and worshiped Him.  The Scriptures tell us, starting with verse 25: "Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.  It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord's Christ. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God saying: 'Sovereign Lord, as you have promi...

11  My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline,     and do not resent his rebuke,  12  because the LORD disciplines those he loves,     as a father the son he delights in Proverbs 3: 11-12 There's a large, plastic play castle on the smaller of the two playgrounds of the daycare where I work.  One wall of the castle that connects to the wall where a small orange slide comes down has been unattached for some time. The reason being, the kids constantly open this side to make an extra door to run through while chasing and hiding from each other. The thick plastic of the play castle is stable enough that it still stands on the ground, but the children make it a habit to climb up onto the side of the wall and sit on the broken side and rock it back and forth. Images of small three year old tumbling head first into the middle of the castle flood my mind as I watch this, but no matter how many times I warn them to get down or t...

I just spent the weekend in Fishers, IN at the Wesleyan World Headquarters for the 10th Annual Indy Christian Writer's Conference. During the summers I'm much more prone to blogging than I am during the school year. The most obvious reasoning this being time and availability of brain cells. I sometimes forget when I'm not writing that I'm CALLED to writing. I often sit at these Writer's Conferences amidst many published authors and creative thinkers and to be quite honest, I feel like I'm not cut out to be a writer. I grew up writing. My mom is a teacher so I learned to read when I was very young and my first novel of choice was Nancy Drew. I read her, pretended to be her, and wrote mock stories in the Nancy Drew sleuth fashion. This led to writing creative sci-fi stories (of course modeled after Star Wars and Star Trek) and eventually I took a stab at historical fiction. I finished my first novel about a family in the slave south and their escape to freedom w...

I’ve recently come to realized that I’ve lived my life predominantly as a Wesleyan, more so than as a Christian.  I was raised the daughter of a Wesleyan minister, and the grand-daughter of a Wesleyan minister and two Wesleyan missionaries.  I spent every Sunday in a Wesleyan church.  I spent my summers at a Wesleyan camp.  I attended a Wesleyan University.  And I’m now attending a Methodist seminary.  While I believe it’s important to align yourself with a denomination for the doctrinal structure and discipleship, as well as for the close-knit community, I’ve found that I’ve both alienated and prejudiced myself in regards to other Christian denominations.  Rather than seeing myself as a believer among various and equally Christian denominations, I’ve elevated my denomination (which I do hold in high regards for its emphasis on social justice and personal holiness) above all others.  I’ve allowed myself to see only the weaknesses in others denomin...