Jesus and “The Catastrophe of Success”

Anyone who knows me will tell you that my life has been far from perfect. I have been anxious and depressed, sometimes in a deeply crushing way. I have been racially unaware and sometimes wonder, “Am I still?” Other times I get too worked up, because my personality is on the Type A continuum. I have been unemployed […]

I love how Jesus brought outsiders into his circle. I love how he kept company with people we would least expect. Don’t you? Jesus was always welcoming pagans and prostitutes and ‘sinners’ into his company…wooing us all to belong with him even before we believed in him. Meanwhile, the Pharisees and scribes muttered, “This man welcomes […]

Several years ago, our Christ Presbyterian Church staff did a Myers-Briggs related exercise together. Part of the exercise included listing all of the well-known people who share our specific personalities. As an INFJ, I discovered that I share a personality with both Jesus and Gandhi. My first thought was that prior to this exercise, I […]

I have said it before and I will say it again. I am comforted—deeply so—by the fact that God put so many misfits and insecure people in the Bible and then accomplished beautiful things through their lives. The ancient Jewish patriarch, Jacob, is one of these people. Jacob was haunted by insecurity and self-doubt, which […]