In Gennesaret

SCOFF (verb): to speak to someone or about something in a scornfully derisive or mocking way If you’ve read this blog much at all, you’re probably aware of how much I love words. Here’s a fun one: “scoff”. Say it with a British accent and an offended look on your face. Think Professor McGonagall. Or Dame Judi Dench. It came to mind during a recent interaction when I felt someone was scoffing at me. Being scoffed at is NOT pleasant. It is insulting. Yet it seems that scoffing has become a new American pastime. Our favorite celebrities and political figures and social media personalities . . . they’re generally the folks who have witty one-liners to slam the people we disagree with. All the memes we pass around gleefully . . . they’re bursting with contempt and mockery. We saturate ourselves in it every day. It’s no wonder it starts flowing out of our own mouths without our even realizing it. Scornful derision. Mocking. Let’s be honest: it’s terribly unattractive. I mean, it’s a...

So, I have some breaking news for my Christian friends after a divisive year and a difficult election season: the Church will not be destroyed. It will survive. This is a certainty. Read the end of the story (which we’ve got in our hot little hands – either in print or on your Bible app). We have it on good authority from the church’s very own founder and maintainer: “ the gates of hell will not prevail against it. ” Which means the government of the United States will not prevail against it either. And neither will the secular culture. Nor the Religious Right. The Church will survive. No doubt about it. The way some folks are talking and acting these days, you’d think that was in question. There’s a whole lot of panicking going on. Ohhh, the transgender folk . . . ohhhh, the MAGA idiots . . . . ohhhh, the socialists . . .  there’s folks out there marryin’ people that shouldn’t be married . . . destroyin’ the planet with their sinful carbon emissions . . . makin’ us get shots...

Audacious (adj.): willing to take bold risks This is one of my middle schoolers’ vocabulary words this quarter, and they had an assignment yesterday to discuss with one of their parents an audacious goal they want to set for themselves for the end of 2022. I was kind of proud of that assignment – forcing them to use the new word in the context of their own real lives and to have a meaningful conversation with a parent. Win-win. But then I realized that I shouldn’t ask my students to do something I’m not willing or able to do myself. Sigh . . . I don’t remember who coined the term “BHAG” (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal), but it’s a term I like. I mean, I like it because I like words and I like audacity and, in a theoretical sense, I like the idea behind a BHAG. I just have a hard time coming up with one for myself. The major changes in my life in the last couple years (single again, kids out of the house) have prompted people to ask me what I’m going to do with myself now. And t...

So, a couple of significant things happened this past Tuesday. First, there was a midterm election that will have a huge impact on the direction of our country for the next couple years. And second, I went to the hospital and came home without a uterus. The first event affects the entire nation. The second affects me and a bunch of people around me. The first has filled me for weeks with intense frustration and profound discouragement about the state of our world and even of the church. The second is reminding me that God is still there and still good and so are his people. It’s only been a couple days, but I seem to be healing well. Once the doctor actually got inside me, she found more bad stuff in there than we were aware of, so it was a good thing we didn’t put this off like I was seriously considering. A God thing. People messaged me all day Tuesday and have kept messaging me with prayers for a safe procedure and a smooth recovery. My two sisters and two daughters...