I learned that gardening can be both an ecstasy and an agony.
I am three years old, and I am hungry. I sit in a honey-colored wooden chair and press the small of my back up against its hard slats. My two brothers, my sister...
Psalm 130 begins with a desperate cry for help. The psalmist calls out to God "from the depths of despair" (v. 1).
Psalm 12 begins with a dire description of a culture on the road to ruin: "[T]he godly are fast disappearing! The faithful...
I grew up in a culture, church, and family that didn't have much room for sadness. If...
One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”...
In Mark 8, Jesus uses the imagery of crucifixion to call people to follow him sacrificially. If they want to experience the...
Connections between the upheavals of the 1960s and the Occupy movement pose questions about our allegiances and our work.
Why do you forget us continually; why do you abandon us for such a long time? Lamentations 5:20 For 151 verses, except for a brief respite in chapter 3, the writer of Lamentations...
The memory of my suffering and homelessness is bitterness and poison. I can’t help but remember and am depressed. I call all...
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My Lord has become like an enemy. He devoured Israel; he devoured all her palaces; he made ruins of her city walls...
People heard that I was groaning, that I had no comforter. All my enemies heard about my...
A young man named Don came to see me for pastoral counseling. As he shared his story, I could sense that he...
Her adversaries have become rulers; her enemies relax. Certainly the LORD caused her grief because of her many wrong acts. Her children...
“Father, if you are willing, please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done...
The cup of Jesus will involve suffering, to be sure. Yet “cup of suffering” doesn’t quite get what Jesus meant when he...
He walked away, about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed. Luke 22:41 From the top...
