Power in Weakness

I've been a book lover since as early as I can remember.  In third grade I was chided by my parents for reading Frank Peretti's supernatural thriller, This Present Darkness , a near 400 page fiction book, because of the nightmares it was causing.  This warning, however, hardly stopped me.  I went on to read the sequel, equally as long, and the next book he had written as well, The Prophet , all in the course of a few weeks.  Sometimes my hunger for literature would fix upon unusual selections, like the ones above, and other times on adolescent favorites, like the My Teacher Is An Alien series, or Roald Dahl's Matilda .  No matter the particular book in view, I vividly remember coming home from school only to plop down on my bed at 3:30 and devour page after page until dinner time, and sometimes until bedtime.  (Nobody told me that this was nerdy behavior; it was simply what I loved, and my social status at private school didn't seem to be affected by it.)...

Like any good 90's kid, I grew up adoring Jim Carrey.  I still remember watching Ace Ventura: Pet Detective for the first time.  I was on my living room floor at about 11 years old, watching wide eyed as Carrey's face distorted to almost-inhuman degrees in comical expressions and, just as frequently, altered his voice for increased effect.  I was laughing so hard I almost peed.  I was addicted. I followed him carefully for years, sometimes disappointed by his more childish roles (at least in my "mature" adolescent estimation) such as in The Mask , but more often impressed by "classics" such as Dumb and Dumber , Liar Liar , and The Truman Show .  (I'm not sure if I should be embarrassed by this, but I still spontaneously quote lines from Dumb and Dumber , and if any of my fellow 90's childhood companions are present they invariably laugh or chime in with their own beloved quotes.)  As I got older, Carrey's roles got more complicated, and less fr...

If only time flew like a dove Well, we could watch it fly and just keep looking up And we've got time on our hands Nothing but time on our hands - Paramore, "Hallelujah"   Lately I'm finding myself with more free time than usual.  Well, that might be a bit of an understatement.  I don't have a job, I'm not leading any ministries, and I don't have any real friends here at Grover Beach.  I've joined a small group at church, and there are nightly prayer meetings going on throughout the week that I look forward to participating in, but for the first time in a loooong time for me, these events are all optional. Really, I can do whatever I want with my time.  Then again, that's why I moved here - to separate myself from the overdose of commitments to rest more and do whatever it takes to recover my health.  Now, I know that saying I can do whatever I want will sound like I'm trying to do the typical make-my-life-sound-awe...

If you've known me for any length of time at all, or have read only a small snippet of my writings, you know that I love the ocean.  I could go on and on about it, in fact.  Just recently I found a book belonging to my step-dad, Dale, called "Sea Edge," and every chapter contains a different analogy relating the ocean to spiritual realities.  This author, though he looks a bit like Mr. Rogers and has a hat strangely akin to that of Crocodile Dundy on the back cover of his book, obviously has lived inside my brain.  What you might not know about me, however, is that I've wrestled with depression on and off throughout my adult life.  That's because I don't talk about it very much.  Oh, every once in awhile I will ask a close friend for prayer and disclose these kind of things, but I hate the stigma that the word "depression" brings, so I avoid living under it or being labeled by it.  I also have a strong will, and I do my best to "choose" a...

Recently I put a Kodak picture on the dashboard of my car.  On the back of the picture it says in simple red font, "Jun. 1989." Now, I have never been the kind of person that puts pictures on my dashboard - not any girlfriend that I can remember, and certainly not any sports teams, bands, models, or "selfies."  But I found this treasure the other day at my little brother's new house, and something about it absolutely transfixes me.  This blog entry is my attempt to explain why. This "throwback" (25 years back!) snugly contains all five members of my family in front of the Pacific Ocean - probably Pismo Beach.  My Dad is wearing his typical tight black jacket and is comfortably holding my 2 year-old little brother, who is looking at the camera with wide-eyed shock.  My Mom is posing next to my Dad with a look of serene confidence, and her arm is around my freckled older brother.  I am on the outskirts of the family, leaning into my older brother, wi...

It's not often that a trip to the dentist is epic, but this one was. Not because I was put under the knife, or paid thousands of dollars, but because the trip itself turned out to be emblematic of my life right now.  It was the last straw, so to speak; the final memo from God to Glenn, letting me know that there was a real and important message being conveyed that shouldn't be ignored. But the memos began much earlier than the dentist appointment. A little less than a month ago, the discipleship school at which I work participated in a healing ministry called "plumb line."  Plumb line is, in essence, an inner healing ministry.  We do the work of introspection, identifying "bricks" that make up the "walls of our heart," representing lies we have believed since childhood that have contributed to the brokenness in our personalities. I've gone through it several times since I first attended the school, so I can't say I expected my socks...

The next four chapters of 1 Corinthians contain some of the most controversial passages in the Bible - no joke.  I could spend a lot of time and cyberspace on this blog trying to give my opinions and interpretations of the sections concerning women in ministry and the spiritual gifts.  In fact, I would rather enjoy that.  I think it certainly matters what we believe about these issues.  However, I also think that there is a definite reason that one of the Bible's most eloquent and beautiful passages on love is found sandwiched between these infamous chapters of long-standing debate.  Love, the Scriptures are telling us, is the key.  What would we believe about women in ministry if love guided our theology?  A love for Jesus and His Truth, first and foremost, but also a love and honor for women themselves and the unique and powerful gifts they carry?  I wonder if we would so easily relegate them to the background of church government with our p...