What would Easter look like without Good Friday? As I sit with the weight of Good Friday, preparing to preach tonight, I find myself wondering: What would Good Friday have felt like if we didn’t know Easter was coming? What if we didn’t know the resurrection was just around the corner? What if we didn’t know that in three days, God would turn grief into glory and death into life? How deep might our despair have sunk? How unbearable would the silence feel? Would we, like Jesus

There is a particular kind of irony in preaching about the arrival fallacy while being in the process of applying for a loan, purchasing a new house, and surrounded by a growing stack of moving boxes. Recently, I found myself standing in a pulpit, talking about the temptation to believe that life will finally feel settled, peaceful, or complete once we reach some future milestone. Once we arrive. Once the transition is over. Once everything is in its proper place. And then I

Lent has begun, and yesterday's Ash Wednesday worship service was beautiful in the small chapel at Silverton. There is something profoundly moving about watching people gently trace the sign of the cross on one another’s foreheads. Spouses marking spouses. Friends marking friends. Parents marking children. Relationships becoming something more tender than before. The words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” landing not as doom, but as belonging. It’s

I have a teenager who makes lists. Not the practical kind—grocery, chores, pack for the trip—but the aspirational kind. Lists about her future. About who she will be. Where she will live. What will finally make her happy. Lists that assume a neat sequence of steps, each one leading to the next, until—ta da!—life clicks into place. She talks a lot about a perfect and wonderful life will be when she achieves those goals. And sometimes, watching her write yet another list, I cat