Tortured, imperfect, and held by Jesus: Garrett Kell’s touching tribute to his mother, “My two earliest memories of my mother couldn’t be more different. The pleasant one is our evening routine: She’d pull me onto her lap to recite the Lord’s Prayer and sing “The Old Rugged Cross” until I fell asleep. The other is her sobbing in her bathroom, telling me how badly she wanted to die.”
How Jesus helps my unbelief: Erin Mount shares her struggle, “My mind knows that God has not left me, for there is nowhere I can go that he will not also be3, but my heart has not felt him. All of the pain and sorrow and sickness would be much easier to bear had I felt God’s comfort, but for whatever reason, God has not felt near. It has felt like he was hiding, and as much as I have tried to find him, I couldn’t.”
Wes Huff is untouched by Alex O’Connor’s critiques: Recently Wes Huff appeared on Joe Rogan to talk about the historical evidence for the reliability of scripture and of Jesus’ death and resurrection (I wrote this post on it). In this video Gavin Ortlund breaks down a critic’s response to Huff.
Nearness is enough: Kirsten Black reflects on God’s nearness when she lost her 18-year-old son to Leukemia, “I think God’s nearness is one of those mysteries that we can know to be true yet still not fully understand. If I’m honest, I wish it was different. I wish there were tangible expressions of God’s nearness all the time in the midst of suffering.”
Why do some people look like their dogs? Jim Davies suggests it’s more than a fluke.

Photo by Richard Brutyo on Unsplash