The post I am never sure what to say… appeared first on Jenny Rae Armstrong.

When everything looks dark, your troubled soul won’t let you sleep, and you’re beginning to doubt everything you’ve ever believed to be true about God, don’t look back or pine for simpler days. Be brave and look the storm straight in the face. You might be surprised who you see walking ahead of you.

Listen to the sermon here:

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“I am going to say something hard, and I am going to say it in love. I fear that many American Christians view Muslims the way Jonah viewed the Ninevites. But God loves them, and wants them to be saved… So what are we going to do about it? Are we going to align ourselves with God’s heart, or run as far and as fast and as hard as we can in the opposite direction?”

Listen to the sermon here:

(Right click on the media player and click save to download the sermon for offline listening.)

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The household codes, where women, children, and slaves were told to submit to their husbands, parents, and masters, may be the most abused passages in all of scripture. This sermon looks at the cultural context those passages were written in, and points to a Jesus-oriented way of living together, where we lay down our power and privilege to raise others up.

(Right click on the media player and click save to download the sermon for offline listening.)

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Here’s a question.

What makes you a good person?

Or what do you do to try to be a good person, if you don’t feel like you’re a good person at all?

There’s good news and there’s bad news. The bad news is that one of the things you do makes you a good person. You can do all the right things and still have a hard, unloving heart that is far from God. The same is true in reverse. You can be a hot mess with a soft, loving heart.

The good news is that Jesus has already given us every good thing that we need for abundant life.

This audio sermon, based on Colossians 2, explores this issue and how it plays out in our lives.

(Right click on the media player and click save to download the sermon for offline listening.)

The post When you’re not good enough, and it’s okay. appeared first on Jenny Rae Armstrong.

I’m sad. I’m angry. I’m frightened. I feel helpless.

But here’s the thing about feeling helpless. Sometimes, it causes us to cede responsibility. While we can’t control circumstances, we do make choices about our own actions, and we all have areas of influence that we are called to speak into.

So, I have something that I want to say. About Jesus. And violence. And you and me.

We live in a culture that is steeped in violence. That tolerates and sometimes even celebrates violence. We watch violent acts on screens as a form of entertainment. We play games where we take on the identity of characters who win by killing others. We speak words that are meant to wound. We do violence to our own bodies, and to the bodies of others. We keep weapons so we can commit violence against anyone trying to commit violence against us. It is legal for the state to kill people who have been convicted of certain crimes, and for mothers to kill their unborn babies. We spend billions to build and maintain the strongest military on earth. We have bought into the idea that violence will ward off violence, that the best defense is a good offense.

Believe it or not, I am not looking to start an argument about topics many people consider controversial. I do understand how some of the things I just mentioned can be justified from a worldly, humanistic standpoint.

But I am a Christian. I have pledged my life to the crucified and risen messiah and put it into his hands. And I do not—can not—understand how people who follow a man who allowed himself to be brutally executed so that others could live, can be so casually accepting of the use of violence. How we can say it is okay to harm others to defend of our own interests.

Isn’t that the antithesis of the cross?

Or do we just want to be the beneficiaries of Jesus’ work, without actually becoming like him? Without actually submitting our lives to his teaching and following his example?

That’s not the way it works.

One of the lectionary passages for this coming Sunday is 1 Peter 2:19-23. It talks about how Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross; how he did not retaliate when insulted, or make threats while he was suffering. And it encourages Jesus’ followers to follow his example.

It’s not practical. It’s not reasonable. It’s not what we have been taught to do.

But here’s the thing. Somehow, in some mysterious way, Jesus bore our sins on the cross. He took all the insults, and agony, and violence, and nastiness the world could hurl at him, and instead retaliating, he absorbed it. Instead of perpetuating the cycle of violence, he stopped it, stopped it with his own precious, broken, savaged body.

And somehow, we have the audacity to perpetuate a cycle that Jesus gave his life to end? To inflict violence on human beings Jesus suffered to save?

We live in a world that has been broken by sin. As part of that broken system, I commit or am complicit in acts of violence far more often than I like. Sometimes it is intentional, like when I speak words that are meant to tear people down instead of build them up, to wound, instead of heal. Sometimes it is unintentional, like when my money goes to organizations that employ harmful or exploitative practices. I cannot fix all of this, but I can keep on walking and growing as a disciple of Jesus, crying out for healing for myself, for others, and for this great big broken world.

I believe that healing is coming, and I want to live my life as if it is already here. To live as a citizen of heaven, instead of a citizen of this world.

The cross is not an abstraction, not some sort of cosmic parental bail-out so we can go on living in the same sinful pattern as before without changing our ways. It is a response to sin, a place for our selfishness, and violence, and depravity to be put to death, so we can live for righteousness. It is a place of suffering that somehow heals us.

I do not expect humanity to suddenly come to its senses, to put down its swords and take up crosses. But I do think Christians need to think long and hard about our beliefs regarding the use of violence, and whether it lines up with the life and teachings of Jesus.

The post On Jesus, Violence, and Jordan Edwards appeared first on Jenny Rae Armstrong.

Hey, want to do something nice for me on my birthday? Consider ordering a copy of Don’t Hide Your Light Under a Laundry Basket for yourself or a friend, or leaving a review (or just clicking the stars) on Amazon, Goodreads, or your favorite bookseller’s website. Thanks a million–or at least 29 or 40.

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I’ve also heard the pushback. Is all this all this talk about brokenness just celebrating failure? Shouldn’t we be pushing forward toward healing and wholeness?

Last night, I caught sight of two of my oldest, most cherished dolls, nestled in the corner of the bookshelf in my writing room. And it made me think.

I have had Violet since I was very young, probably 4 or 5. She was a gift my father brought back from one of his trips to Haiti. When I was in my teens, a young boy visiting our house got a little too rough with her, leaving her (and me, at least a little bit) shattered.

My father found a doll just like Violet in Florida, and bought her for me. And while I appreciated the gesture, it wasn’t Violet.

See, I don’t value Violet for her appearance–I couldn’t simply replace Violet with a shiny, unbroken version of herself. And I don’t love Violet because she is broken. The cracks don’t define her. But the cracks are part of the story about Violet, a story that intersects with my own in some small way.

Her story is important to me, beauty, brokenness, and all.

I inherited June from Grandma June, a special family friend who died while I was in my teens. June looks perfectly respectable on the outside, but when you get below the surface, you can see that she is falling apart on the inside. June’s body is brittle, patched together, bearing the scars of years of trauma. While Violet is just as sturdy as ever, despite her cracks, you have to be gentle with June. Jostle her too hard, and her sawdust stuffing leaks out.

Again, I don’t love June because she is broken. But I do treat her with the special tenderness her condition requires. And I don’t know the story of the scraps and rags that are holding her together–if they were taken from the petticoat of a long dead mother, or the torn shirt of a brother whose great-great-grandchildren still live in this community. But I will admit to viewing them with reverential awe. June has come through so much over this century-plus, survived things that should have destroyed her because she was held together by forces larger than herself. The patches and wide, child-like stitches are a testament to that.

So, I don’t think the question of whether we should celebrate or shun our brokenness is an either-or proposition. Brokenness simply is what it is. The world takes its toll on us, whether we acknowledge it or not, but that does not change our worth in the eyes of God, or cause him to love us any less. Perhaps we should not rejoice in our brokenness, but we can point to our cracks and rejoice in how God has pieced the shattered pieces back together, point to our patches and tell the story of being held together through circumstances that should have torn us apart.

And we know, in the end, that God is making all things new.

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