The House You're Building

    When you study the bible verse-by-verse you don’t get to skip the tricky parts.  For ladies, who make up the majority of my blog following, the group of verses in this section of 1 st  Peter [1]  are a counter-cultural revolution. I was fascinated by this passage and have so much I can say about it, but I’m going to try and boil my points down to one clear theme.  Beauty is vulnerability.  When I first studied this in the ESV translation, I came across verse 3:6 and the wording of it was very strange….  Don’t fear anything that is frightening .  In our humanity, a common response to things that are frightening is fear. That seems pretty intuitive and people who don’t respond in fear might not be living in reality.  And that my friends is the key!  It is not in our nature to confront what the world fears and display a different response.  It is other-worldly, of the divine nature, the cultural p...

  Have you ever thought about what it was like when God created the animals?  I’m a huge Harry Potter fan and one of my favorite parts is seeing how the artists in the films visually recreate some of my favorite magical creatures like hippogriffs and thestrals.  Imagine the whimsy of God, making the massive blue whale, the intricate hummingbird or the pieced-together platypus.  Not only inventing their physical characteristics but choosing their behaviors.  I on team dog because God made them loyal, sweet, and playful.    What was God thinking when He created sheep?  Did you know that sheep are mentioned more than any other animal in the bible [1] ?  Not only were sheep an important part of the ancient world’s economy, but God uses them in the Bible as an analogy of how we act.  It’s almost like God knew us and decided to design an animal that reflects our tendencies to show us our need for Him. Most ar...

  Anybody reading this want to be like Jesus?  I do, I do so much and the more I grow in my faith, the more I see that I have so far to go.  One area I constantly find myself struggling with is when I am treated unfairly.     Let me confess a big social faux pas I made recently.  Yes, I’m gonna go there on mask/no mask.   A few weeks ago I was running some trails without facial protection.  I’m going to justify my choice for all you haters out there.  I live in the northwest and I am used to 40-degree weather 8 months out of the year.  When it hits above 70, I could literally be a poster child for a deodorant add.  Add on the activity of running and I would be curled up in the fetal position and out of breath with face-gear on.  When I see people running with a mask on, I actually stop and stare at the unicorn that just passed me.     I’m attempting a bit of ...