Book Review: Between Life and Death
Back in the fall of 2018, I was processing feelings of grief after losing my grandfather. He passed away at home surrounded by family and friends. I remember cherishing these final moments with him. In the days after his memorial service, I remember encountering the work of Kathryn Butler on Oceans Rise. I honestly can’t recall how I stumbled upon this blog, but her forthcoming book Between Life and Death caught my attention. I was...
The Church’s Response to the Opioid Epidemic: An Interview with Daniel Edwards
From 1999 to 2017, more than 700,000 people died from drug overdoses. In 2017, the number of overdose deaths involving opioids (including prescription opioids and illegal opioids like heroin and illicitly manufactured Fentanyl) was six times higher than it was in 1999. On average, 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose. To put these numbers in perspective, opioid-related deaths outnumber car crashes and gun-related deaths...
Navigating Grief
I have recently been thinking through the dynamics of grief and how human beings deal with loss. As a hospital chaplain, I meet people every day who are grieving. I have seen how grief has affected those I care about in church. Furthermore, my grandfather passed away this past September. Papaw was special to me. He was my friend. Grief is a normal reaction we all face to significant loss. This reaction is often left unprocessed and...
Solutions for Anxiety
The most common command in the Bible is “do not worry” or “do not be afraid.” Why would Jesus tell us not to worry when His own “sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” in the garden of Gethsemane (Lk. 22:44)? The truth is that Jesus knows we will worry. Nobody is immune from the anxieties of this world. However, there is comfort when the Maker of the universe reminds us to focus on Him instead of on our anxieties. In...
Making Decisions and the Will of God (Part II)
Believers sense on a regular basis that God has some sort of plan for their lives, and they genuinely want to be a part of this plan. Furthermore, many believers have been taught to seek out God’s individual will for their lives in order to participate in the Christian life. In Part II of this series (see Part I), we’ll look at some Biblical and theological considerations related to decision-making and the will of God. Biblical...
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