Month: March 2020

For several thousand years, the Jewish community and, was time has gone on, people from all faith backgrounds have resonated with the Hebrew Psalms.

It’s hard not to connect when we hear how ancient people interacted with a living God. Every emotion, from love and longing to pain and loss, finds its expression somewhere in the corpus.

The beginning of Psalm 42 has really connected for me recently:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
    so my soul longs for you, O God.

²My soul thirsts for God,
    for the living God.
When shall I come and behold
    the face of God?

Growing up in West Michigan, I saw my fair share of these creatures; the local species is the whitetail variety. On many occasions I have witnessed deer licking up fresh water from a stream or still pond. The text here recognizes the subtle difference between these creatures and myself, at least as far as I could comprehend, for I had and still have more than enough water and food; but I long for a larger sense of connection to my maker, not just the next meal. Maybe that’s true too for the creature too; but I suppose for now, at least, I cannot know.

Also, seemingly unlike the woodland creature, I am sometimes crushed with sadness and acquainted with loss. Virtual church, for all our efforts, isn’t the same as the sustaining gift of person-to-person connection. Virtual hugs are not real hugs, as nice of a gesture as they are. FaceTime is nice, it’s just not quite face time. For all our talk of health, I do think we should consider our mental and spiritual health alongside our hand washing habits; it’s not an either-or but a both-and. No apology for that digression!

Returning to both our physical, spiritual, and mental health, it is impossible not to wonder where God is in all aspects of our wellness.  Continue reading “speaking to our soul amidst chaos” →

Every weekend since we moved to Silicon Valley, we notice moving trucks in our neighborhood.

The San Francisco Bay Area is transient. There is so much here! It’s incredible! There are few places in the world where one can make hundreds of thousands of dollars every year, yet drive a half hour or less to surf. Or hike. Or check out an amazing museum. Ir have a world class meal. Drive a couple hours and you’re in the Sierra Nevada mountains – Lake Tahoe has limitless fun [though it typically comes with a hefty price tag].

The Bay Area has its challenges, to be sure, but one look at the topography is enough; it’s drop dead gorgeous.

There is a reason people stream from across the country to live here. It’s an amazing place to live, pure and simple.

Once they get here, however, the difficulties can be intimidating for people from any station in life. A couple years ago, 46% of Bay Area residents were planning on leaving within a few years. But why leave?  Continue reading “the meaning of home” →