Living life with steps of faith

Yesterday, an Amber Alert was posted for one of my relatives. As a family we talked to his school, tried to contact as many friends as possible, explored the possibilities of where he might have gone. We were on a search, a search that felt helpless. And then my relative was found and we rejoiced! This morning during my devotional time I thought about what this meant theologically. I was struck with the number of passages that dealt with the lost object or person. I saw how this is a parable of our lives and a message regarding the Kingdom of Heaven. I considered how the search felt so foolish in our sense of being helpless, yet we searched nonetheless. What does it mean for the shepherd to leave the flock to go after the one wandering sheep? What are the risks of doing so? How does this make the shepherd vulnerable? Why does the one animal value so much? We were sitting around family Christmas when we learned the news. We are a very large family - one of us was missing. The Ch...

Fatherhood. This is a word with much power. When we hear the word a variety of emotions and images come to mind, how they are shaped are dependent upon our personal experiences with our own father. In the church, there is a wide range of attitudes toward the title “Father” and its use in the church. There are movements that encourage men “to be men” and other movements that strive for gender equality and sensitivity in addressing God as Father. I suspect that there is a profound reason for God choosing to reveal Himself as “Father.” Perhaps God knew just how much this role would need to be redeemed. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2004 Current Population Survey Report “Household Relationship and Living Arrangements of Children Under 18 Years, by Age, Sex, Race, Hispanic Origin,” 23.6 million children (that is basically 1 in 3 children) in the U.S. are “orphaned” by absent biological fathers. The absence of a father makes it 5 times more likely that a child will grow up in ...