Marginal Christianity

    I  had gone 40 years without ever having the flu. +    I had this unbelievably great healthy track record of not getting the flu until this year. My wife and I had spent a Saturday afternoon in early January installing a new back splash at my mother-in-law’s house. Our little remodeling project prompted the little arguments and multiple trips to the local hardware store common to most projects we work on together. As we were finishing up, a creeping achiness began to overtake me and when the project was complete, I sat on the floor in the kitchen leaning against the hard cabinet assuming I was just tired. Nope. The flu was just beginning to settle in. My wife and I headed home and within two hours we both were wrapped up in blankets, shivering, coughing, and feverish. With three boys it is hard enough when one of us is sick, but this scenario was worse; we were both sick, with the flu, at the exact same time. +   For the next couple of...

What do you think? Tears began to form and roll down my cheeks as she proclaimed over us, “ In Jesus Christ, we get our bodies back .” I sat on the edge of my seat at full attention – holding back the impulse to stand and cheer. Cherith Nordling’s words were cutting straight to my core during her plenary talk at the first North American Gathering of Missio Alliance.+ Her words registered so deeply and genuinely within me that they became to me Jesus’ gentle touch in my bone-deepest aching. I sensed a holy relief settle throughout the room that afternoon – like we had all been holding our breath for ten years and finally had permission to exhale.+ She announced the possibility of something more. It was an announcement of liberation and renewal. We do not have to be stuck in cycles of hiding and compensating and striving. Even though our humanity is a source of so much pain – something we desperately want to escape – our brokenness and hurt, in Christ, could become – has b...