This Christmas, I was gifted a book that lists out 150 popular hymns, their sheet music, and a bio of where the hymn was inspired. I picked it up over the past few days and I’ve been leafing through it; finding the hymns I have sung all my life and reading the backstory on where they come from. I have to admit, there are so many hymns that I don’t know, and yet the words to them are sincerely profound and beautiful. This past weekend, I found myself singing “It is Well with My Soul” over and over again as I did housework, so I decided to look it up in the book and find out the inspiration from the song.

I remember being 20 years old at a Friday night worship service. It was an all-are-welcome event, so we brought the youth up from the church basement to be a part of it. In the middle of a song, I felt a little tap on my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see my Pastor, David Knapp, standing next to me. With a little smile on his face, he leaned down so I could hear him and said, “Do you think the youth band has a song they’d like to share?” At this point, we had a small youth band comprised of a handful of teens who were mostly self-taught in their instruments. Still, I nodded and he said, “I’ll let the team on the altar know that the youth are going to lead after the next song.”

Blessed are those who mourn… It might seem sort of contradictory. How can it be possible to mourn and yet be blessed? If we’re mourning, it would mean we lost something, right? And losing something or someone to the point of grief can’t be something Jesus wants for us, let alone something He blesses us with. Yes, when Jesus says blessed are those who mourn, He means real and harrowing heartache. The word He uses in the Greek is “pentheó” which means a deep, personal grief over a death or a hope that dies. It is a grief so severe that it takes possession of the person and cannot be hidden.

My daughter got four vaccines at her last doctor's visit. If you’ve ever had a baby, you’ll know that even one vaccine can make a baby fussy, clingy, uncomfortable, and unhappy. Now multiply that by four. After getting pricked at her appointment, she fell asleep long enough for us to pick up infant Tylenol and make it home, then the crying commenced. We did everything: nursed her until she refused any more, hopped in the shower for skin-to-skin and let the water run over her, bounced her, walked around with her, turned on music, the whole nine. Finally, the thing that helped her relax and sleep again was laying on her daddy’s chest for a good snuggle. And now, as I watch her relaxed and comforted, her little hands wrapped around Sam as far as they’ll make it, I am reminded of how that’s exactly the way God sees me: small, innocent, and in need of a Father God to be saved and comforted.

Have you ever had someone who seemed intent on hurting you or your family? I’m talking about and over and over type situation; like one where they hurt you, you work to forgive them, turn the other cheek, and they end up offending you on a completely new level. The Christianese answer is that you should continue to turn the other cheek to this person, but if you’re anything like me in this kind of situation, your prayers start to sound somewhere along the lines of, “Lord, there just isn’t another cheek left to give!”

I’ve served as a worship leader for 13 years. It doesn’t feel like that long in my brain, but I started serving on my youth worship team when I was a freshman in high school. Over the years, I’ve served on multiple teams,both in the lead and in the background, at a handful of different churches with lots of different beliefs. There are a lot of different worship songs that spark debate amongst worship teams, especially now that worship songs are going under the microscope in terms of: is this worship to God, or man-centered worship under a problematic theology? One song that seems to be debated more often, I’ve noticed, is “Blessed Be Your Name” by Matt Redman.

I’ve probably said this before, but Ruth is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Some people disagree. I’ve heard some people pull out some really questionable theology out of this book and completely twist it completely out of context. The truth is, at its heart, the Book of Ruth is a beautiful metaphor of God’s redemptive plan and one woman’s resilience and tenacity.