Author: Rachel
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“Hope Is What Allows Me to Be Here”: Suffering with Christ in Mosul, Iraq
We live in an era when many are suffering. Suffering raises questions, demands interpretation, whether it’s the suffering of war, of natural disaster, of hatred, of personal tragedy. Of every possible interpretation of human suffering, I cling to this truth: that Christ promises to share in it, to be with us in it. This is…
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[Still] Weeping with Those Who Weep: A Response to Charlottesville
I know, I know. Charlottesville isn’t the headline anymore. There’s been a hurricane. There have been more reasons to weep. More things to heal from. But open displays of hate mean something different from what hurricanes mean. I worry that we will try to sweep it all under the carpet (again) too quickly. Charlottesville happened…
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Seeking and Finding: The Reason to Look, Ask, and Knock Is to Find
For everyone who asks receives, and the one who searches finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matthew 7:8) In Buddhist philosophy, desire is the cause of all pain. Since all is ultimately illusion, desire is futile. It is a meaningless yearning after nothing, and so it hurts us. To…
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What If We Are Not Entitled? Asking, Seeking, and Knocking in Community
Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7) What if we are not entitled? What if we don’t assume that anyone owes us anything, but in everything, we recognize that we have tremendous power through the…
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How to Read the Bible (The Ask, Seek, Knock Approach)
Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7) Asking, seeking, and knocking is a posture of the heart. It is an approach to all of life, especially spiritual life. It is characterized not just by openness…
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You Can Hear from God: Listening Prayer and the Choice to Believe
Last week I wrote about coming to God in prayer with an ask-seek-knock kind of approach—with an expectation that God will speak, so we should listen. When you try to do this, you will be challenged. By distractibility. By frailty. Mostly by doubt. Don’t Doubt In James 1:5-7, we are told: Now if any of…
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The Prayer that Listens: How to Practice a Lifestyle of Ask, Seek, Knock
Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7) If I had to sum up my spirituality—the way I do life, the way I commune with God and the way I approach him—in three words, those three…
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To Seek and Keep on Seeking: Jesus’ Call to Continual Exploration
Keep asking, and it will be given to you. Keep searching, and you will find. Keep knocking, and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7) Matthew 7:7 describes a fundamental way of life. It is an approach to all of life that changes who we become. It’s also one of “my” verses, one…
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Pearls Before Swine: Jesus the Riddler and What He Might Have Meant
The Greeks and Romans didn’t use paragraphs. So when my Bible lumps Matthew 7:6 in with the discussion on judgment right before it, I take it on faith that they’ve got the flow right. In this case, though, I’m not sure they do. It’s curious either way that Jesus would follow up a long teaching…
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How to Be a Judgment-Free Zone: Jesus on Judgment, Part 4
In an earlier post I wrote that seeing, understanding, and discerning are intuitive, things we do automatically and instinctively, but judgment is a choice. I believe that to be true, but it isn’t obvious. For most of us, judging itself FEELS instinctive. We do it so fast we aren’t aware we’re doing it. So Jesus’s…