Our bodies prophesy to us before our mind registers their truth. Perhaps the ache in our shoulders tells us to take a rest, the migraines tell us we need to accept God’s love, the stomach pains are linked to a grudge we still bear.
Sometimes God can speak through hair.
It is a natural response to want to creep back into the safety of our tribes, to draw lines about what makes us ‘us’, and them ‘them’, but it is not the way of love. Love crosses boundaries and borders; it dares to stare people in the eye and love them for their personhood, their humanity.
God is love, through and through – daring, defiant, powerful love. God calls us to love others in the way that God alone loves: seeing them truly, loving them entirely.
living in such close proximity to death had marked me. I woke up at night, sensing its heavy breathing on the back of my neck. I saw it everywhere I went: its inevitability, its steady, onward march. It will eventually take everyone I love. It will eventually take me. I paced the house. I felt anxious and afraid.
It’s easy to think that God was punishing me. That’s certainly the sort of theology that permeated my childhood. My depression, and the scattering of people from my life were one big judgement. I found a home in the wailing language of the Psalms.
What would your life look like if it were turned into a film? This is the premise behind Donald Miller’s latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. His (excellent) memoir, Blue Like Jazz, was being turned into a film, and in the process of writing the screenplay he came to an uncomfortable realisation: […]
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Tanya Marlow blogs on the Bible, suffering and the messy edges of life [read more]