He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. — Psalm 40:2Lament is never meant to be the last word. It’s important, it’s necessary, but it’s not where the story ends. God doesn’t lead us through grief, honesty, and community so we can sit in it forever. He meets us in it to help us stand up again. He gives us honest faith s...  Read More

But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” — 1 Samuel 15:22We aren’t built to carry pain alone. But that’s exactly what most of us try to do. We bury it. We wear a smile in public while we bleed inside. We tell ourselves nobody would get it, or we think b...  Read More

Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. — Romans 12:19There are things in life that should break your heart. That’s not a lack of faith. That’s being human. When you see injustice, suffering, evil in the world — when things don’t look like they’re supposed to — there’s something inside you that sa...  Read More

O Lord, God of my salvation, I cry out day and night before You. — Psalm 88:1People say “time heals all wounds,” but let’s be honest. Time covers things up. It buries the wound under busyness or distraction, but the wound doesn’t go away. Some of us carry stuff from years ago like it just happened yesterday. It lingers because time alone doesn’t heal. God does. And part of how God does that is thr...  Read More

My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?” — Psalm 42:3We live in a world that wants us to move on fast. Whether it’s a loss, a disappointment, or something we can’t even fully explain, there’s this quiet pressure to shake it off and keep moving. Put on a smile. Say, “I’m fine.” And for a lot of us, that same mindset creeps into our relation...  Read More

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. — Psalm 137:1Somewhere along the way, a lot of us picked up this idea that we need to clean ourselves up before we can really bring our hearts to God. Like we need to fix our attitude first, calm our emotions, smooth out the rough edges, and then show up with a smile. But if that were true, Psalm 137 wouldn’t exist.Psalm 137 opens w...  Read More