By Chad Bird

01/24/25

8mins

The Dumpster Sermon

Wisdom lurks in the outer places. Rich gratitude sprouts from the impoverished and forgotten.

Steven Paulson

01/23/25

Psalm 6: Wrestling with God

By the end of this prayer of wrestling, David finally has the strength to claim victory over his lying enemies.

Wade Johnston

01/22/25

Christ, Death, and the Psalms

Peace is ours, even when what seems like the end draws near, because we know who Christ is and we know what Christ has done, and we know that who he is and what he’s done is all for us.

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Rick Ritchie

03/10/14

Life Together Under the Cross (Part 2)

As with many teachings, the Lutheran teaching on Mutual Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren fits in with other teachings. The various teachings don’t stand alone, but they fit together as an organic whole.

Chad Bird

02/24/14

Smut and Smug: Secret Religious Delight in Society’s Moral Degradation

I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.

Chad Bird

02/21/14

Look Who I Found in the Grave

God must kill me. He’s got to slay me, put me six feet under, and shovel dirt atop my corpse. Then, it’s like, “Hey, I finally understand! You’re God and I’m not.

Chad Bird

02/19/14

Tripping Helen Keller

Why, given all the things we wish God had told us, but didn’t, does he “waste our time” by stating the patently obvious? Was there, in Moses’ day, an outbreak of violence against the disabled?

Jeff Mallinson

02/19/14

Ethos Matters

Ever experience a congregation with the word "Grace" in its name that was nonetheless ironically ungracious and legalistic? I have.

Chad Bird

02/04/14

“There Goes My Life”: A Father's Day Reflection

One day I walked about that place I had tried to make home. I realized it was a prison cell of my own devising.

Chad Bird

01/21/14

Clothing for the Naked Eye: Seeing Things as They Really Are

A cemetery is a hard place to confess because the cemetery itself seems to confess, “You, O mortal, have lost.”

Chad Bird

01/09/14

Chewing on the Bible

But unlike fish, there was actual pleasure in the prolonged chewing of this food. For the longer it remained in my mouth, the better it tasted, the more pronounced became its flavor, the more nourishment I received from each bite. This food is the bread on which Jesus survived during his forty days of temptation in the wilderness.

Chad Bird

01/02/14

I've Spent the Better Part of My Life Trying to Kill a Man

If I had hated him even while a child, in his late teens I grew to loathe him as the very antithesis of the man I wanted to be.

Chad Bird

12/31/13

Unlearning Evil: Why I Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

“Let’s face it,” my mom once told me, while delivering a lecture on making the right moral decisions in high school, “sinning is fun.”

Chad Bird

12/19/13

"I Would Have Surrendered My Bethlehem Hotel Room to Mary and Joseph" and Other Self-Serving Fantasies

But when I let my mind go there, in truth all I’m doing is this: bellying up to the bar of sentimentality to drink my fill of falsehoods that leave me intoxicated with feelings of saintly superiority.

Chad Bird

12/12/13

No-Man Remembered

Today, and every day, he wears a crown and every angel in heaven knows him by name.

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