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Another day, another night. Wake up, get the kids breakfast, go do some work, eat lunch, work some more. Come home, eat dinner, talk to Maile. Bedtime, supervise the brushing of teeth. Go into the room 6,723 times to say, “Be quiet.” Write some more before bed. Fall asleep while reading Brennan Manning on the glowing screen of my phone, in the dark.

In the dark.

Day after day passes, and I realize I can get by with much less than I thought. Week after week slips into the rear view, and my inner self adjusts to this new, lower watermark of comfort. But if I’m not careful, the trust in God that I long to experience gives way to a sense of malaise, and a feeling of calloused contentment.

Oh well, it is tempting to think, this must be as good as it gets. Perhaps the most difficult part about this life of faith is to keep from mistaking callousness for trust. A numbing lack of worry isn’t trust. True trust in God is so much more than finding a comfortable equilibrium.

“Faith in God without hope in his promises is tainted trust,” writes Brennan Manning in Ruthless Trust.

Faith without hope relegates faith to a coping mechanism. It can turn faith into nothing more than  4 1/2 hours of television each day (the national average). It can be my pint of Ben and Jerry’s.

But faith with hope? That’s what injects joy into this walk. Faith with hope feels vulnerable, tender to the touch, like fingertips freshly healed from a burn. Faith with hope means staying vulnerable when I want to withdraw, truthful when I’d rather deceive, unmasked. Faith with hope appears naive to many of those around us.

Poor little child, they mumble to one another. He still thinks he can make a difference. He still has confidence that he can do great things. He still believes.

I do. I have to believe. I have to hope. Because faith without hope is tainted trust, and I’ve felt real trust, perhaps only for moments in my life, but I’ve felt it. And I want to live in that space, not of calloused apathy, but of tender, vulnerable hope.

How do you keep hoping?

It’s Wednesday, so that means excerpts from some of my favorite blog posts from the past week(ish):

Perhaps we need to let go of this idea we have about words—that they are clearly definable and, when put together in certain ways, carry a singular, solid meaning. Maybe stories should be approached more like paintings: colors, images, and shapes that are open to the viewer’s own story, experiences, and mood. Rather than writing as one making a statement—”This is what this means”—we should try framing our stories in a question: “What does this mean to you?”

* * * * *

God’s solidarity with us is so important to God that God entered into human history to experience this arbitrariness. The experience of Jesus was moments of closeness to God (baptism, transfiguration) and moments of the absence of God (Garden of Gethsemene, Golgotha).

* * * * *

So I’m turning this rock over in my hands and trying to see the beauty in it. And if beauty cannot be found in it, I’m trying to see hope in it. And if hope cannot be found in it, I am trying to see His goodness in it. And the truth is that His goodness can be seen in every common and broken thing on earth.

* * * * *

Find your should and make it go away.

* * * * *

Because the truth is that this world is full of wonderful, godly people who struggle, whether it be financially or physically or mentally. Crappy things happen to the very best folks out there, people living much harder lives than my own. Could I still believe God was good if we never “got out of this phase”?

* * * * *

It makes Christianity more gritty, dirty and authentic like it mostly shows itself to be in the Bible.  Not this pretty Evangelical facade of “being saved” into some four star hotel.  It makes life now real.  It grounds everything for me.  It grounds me.  It grounds beauty and music and all the beautiful things about life on earth.

* * * * *

“Viv,” I said, “collecting other people’s chewed gum is one of the grossest things ever.”

Vivian started re-chewing her gum. “That’s what being a mom is like,” she said.

* * * * *

(War of the Worlds) is one I spent a lot of time researching and analyzing, both in grad school as well as during my time as Radio Curator at the Museum of Television & Radio (now the Paley Center for Media) in New York. I think there are a number of valuable social media lessons we can learn from this broadcast and how it was received by the public.

* * * * *

When we look down at this scene what would we see Jesus doing amidst the chaos and heartbreak? Can you see him standing at a shelter handing out food and blankets? Easily. In your mind’s eye is he healing the sick and comforting the frightened? Of course. Can you picture him opening the church doors and welcoming in people who need shelter? Without a doubt.

But can you even in your darkest imaginings think of him standing off to one side sermonizing about how it is these people or their parents who have sinned and brought this calamity to pass?

* * * * *

What’s your favorite post from the last week?

A moving video about a series of forgotten children’s books, as well as some intriguing thoughts on the creative process.

“31 books and I’ve never written that well again.”

(Thanks to Bryan Allain for pointing out this video to me.)

Rachel Held Evans’ new book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, is deceptive on multiple levels.

She invites readers to join her on a year of experimentation in which she identifies twelve traits of Biblical Womanhood and then attempts to apply them, some rather literally, to her life. After all, she wants answers to the raging question, “What is Biblical Womanhood?” and what better way to find answers than to live the questions. But this is where the deception comes in: the book isn’t primarily about womanhood, or egalitarianism, or even the entertaining escapades upon which she and her husband Dan embark. It’s (thankfully) not about baking or taking etiquette classes or calling her husband master for a month.

It’s actually a wonderful deception, because her book is about something much more foundational: it’s about how we as Christians approach scripture, and how our interpretations of it will bring life or death to those around us.

* * * * *

I thoroughly enjoyed Rachel’s first book, Evolving in Monkey Town. I like books that ask big questions and point towards difficult answers. I like books that engage ideas everyone is whispering about but are ideas for which the establishment will only give pat answers, allowing for no discussion, no questions. Period.

But when I first heard the title of Rachel’s second book, I was secretly uncertain. I wasn’t sure if I could get excited about a book of immersion journalism that involved Martha Stewart and the Levitical Purity Laws. So I prepared to offer Rachel every ounce of support that I could, all while hiding a tiny flicker of disappointment.

But as soon as I started reading, I found the Rachel Held Evans who signed off at the last chapter of her previous book. And as I followed her smooth writing through chapter after chapter, reflecting on traits like Silence, Modesty, and Valor, I began to appreciate the process of thought through which she led me. More big questions. More thought-provoking ideas.

One quote toward the end of the book remains in my mind:

For those who count the Bible as sacred, the question when interpreting and applying the Bible to our lives is not, “will we pick and choose?” but rather “how will we pick and choose?” We are all selective…If you are looking for verses with which to support slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to abolish slavery, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to oppress women, you will find them. If you are looking for verses with which to liberate and honor women, you will find them.

Even now, there are plenty of people who are more than happy to use the Bible to support continued suppression, oppression, or war in various degrees and forms. There is no doubt that we all, in some form or another, are selective in our reading and application.

So disagree with Rachel’s conclusions if you want, but don’t hate on the book, because this idea, this subject, this discussion about how the Bible should be read and interpreted is one of the most important discussions Christians can facilitate. Don’t try to delete what she has to say (as Lifeway Books would seem to prefer, by choosing not to carry the book) – respond to what she has written (preferably with respect), and contribute to the ongoing dialogue.

Check out Rachel’s new book HERE.

I can just about hear the rain outside, the slow prelude to some giant storm sliding in on the Atlantic. In spite of the prediction of wind and power outages, floods and uncertainty, there is peace in these hours of waiting for the storm. There is a stillness.

As I think back through my recent experience of learning to trust God with my life, I recognize two distinct phases. First there was a period of time where I wondered if God knew what he was doing. But I slowly learned to be okay living the life he has created me to live, even if it doesn’t always look the way I want it to look.

And I thought, in that moment, that I had arrived. Being okay living a simple life, and taking the opportunities that arise: this is what it means to trust God! Or at least that’s what I thought. But soon after that I realized that when you decide to trust God, when you decide to sit quietly and wait, when you decide to stop striving and start listening, the next phase begins.

This round is characterized by the voices of those you love questioning your sanity, usually in small ways. “I understand you’re a writer,” they say. “But most writers don’t make a living that way, right? Maybe you should think about getting a job.” Or, “It’s wonderful that you are chasing your dream, but what about the bills?”

And these are all valid questions. Except for this: I know what I’m supposed to do. I know the path that is spread out before me. I believe in the journey I’m on, and I’m prepared to learn from it one way or another. So I’ve discovered that trusting God means you will look foolish to some. This can be a more difficult phase than the first, because these voices, they are the voices of your friends and family, the ones who, up to this point, were perhaps your greatest cheerleaders.

Of course maybe they weren’t such great encouragers, and then you will see how that has been a good thing, because if they are old stick-in-the-muds and have always been telling you what you can’t do, then they will be easier to ignore at this crucial junction.

But, then again, you know what I mean. You’ve written that book without their approval. You’ve made a decision regarding your children without their agreement. You put up a blog post your friends read without blinking even once, so shocked were they to discover your political leanings or religious views. You quit your job or went on the “dangerous” missions trip or moved into the city. All because there was a voice inside of you, a gentle urging, something telling you to trust, and to do.

The way of trust is, in the end, a lonely way. And this is as it should be, at least for a time, because it’s only when all of your supports have been removed that you will have the courage to open your eyes and see that trust is enough.

From Brennan Manning’s Ruthless Trust:

Moralizing surges to the fore in this unbalanced spirituality. At the very outset, it presents a warped idea of the relationship between God and humans. From her parents a child learns of a deity who strongly disapproves of disobedience, hitting one’s brothers and sisters, and telling lies. When the little one goes to school, she realizes that God shares the fussy concerns of her teachers. At church, she learns that God has another set of priorities: she is told that he is displeased that the congregation is not growing numerically, that irregular attendance is the norm, and that his recurring fiscal demands are not being met.

When she reaches high school, she discovers that God’s interests have expanded to an obsession with sex, drinking and drugs. After twelve years of Christian indoctrination at home, school, and church, the teenager realizes with resentment that God has been used as a sanction by all those who have been responsible for her discipline – as when Mommy and Daddy, at their wits’ end over her mischievous antics as a toddler, alluded to “the eternal spanking.” Through this indoctrination, God is unwittingly associated with fear in most young hearts.

Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, pervert the character of the Christian life. By the time young people enter college, they have often abandoned God, church, and religion.

Do you evoke particular images of God to control the behavior of others? Does it work? What do you think are the long term affects of a child regularly being told that their behavior disappoints God?