Category "Life With God"

Lent Day 27… When It’s Uncool And Embarrassing

Brian Dolleman - March 31, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

Pictured above: Joyelle, one of our super-cool youth leaders, making an uncool and embarrassing face. On Wednesday during our youth service, she led the prayer time… and shared about her own struggle with depression.

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To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA) is a non-profit organization created to give hope to anyone struggling with addiction, depression, self-injury, or thoughts of suicide—and seeks to help connect people to treatment centers, support groups, and other resources. It was founded in 2006 by Jamie Tworkowski.

Recently, Jamie wrote… Read More

Lent Day 26… Dirty Laundry

Brian Dolleman - March 30, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

A young couple moved into a new neighborhood. The next morning while eating breakfast, the wife noticed her neighbor hanging out her laundry. She commented:

Those clothes don’t look very clean; maybe she needs better soap.

Her husband looked, but remained silent. For three weeks, every Monday he would hear some version of these same comments. But the following wash day, his wife was surprised to see a nice white wash on the line next door. She commented: “Look, she finally learned how to wash clothes. I wonder who taught her?”

Her husband responded quietly… Read More

Lent Day 25… The Slow Work Of God

Brian Dolleman - March 29, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art. —Junot Diaz

Pictured above: that’s John, my father-in-law. He’s the best farmer I know (he grew up on a farm in North Dakota and came to Seattle to work at Boeing). He walks slowly—probably because of a bad hip or a bum knee… but there’s something cool about his slow walk. And even though he’s not super-fast, he grows the biggest onions and the best blueberries of anyone I know. It almost seems as if walking slowly is some kind of requirement for being a great farmer.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said… Read More

security is knowing you are not alone psot

Lent Day 24… Security Is Knowing You Are Not Alone

Brian Dolleman - March 28, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

Charles M. Shulz, the cartoonist who gave us Charlie Brown and Snoopy, said:

I feel a constant gratefulness to God…

for His patience with me and with all of us.

I cannot fail to be thrilled every time I read the things that Jesus said, and I am more and more convinced of the necessity of following him. What Jesus means to me is this: In him we are able to see God, and to understand his feelings toward us.

Recently I published a little series of… Read More

Lent Day 23… On Care For Our Common Home

Brian Dolleman - March 27, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

This beautiful prayer is Pope Francis’ “Laudato si” (On Care For Our Common Home)…

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe

and in the smallest of your creatures.

You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

Pour out upon us the power of your love,

that we may protect life and beauty.

Fill us with peace, that we may live

as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

O God of the poor,

help us to… Read More

if you see something special or unique in someone post

Lent Day 20… If You See Something Special Or Unique In Someone, You Should Tell Them

Brian Dolleman - March 23, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

When someone sees something in you, and they have the courage to speak it out, it changes everything… that is what my community does. I’ve learned from them that if you see something special or unique in someone, you should tell them. Our words hold a lot of power. —Dana Tanamachi

While in Los Angeles last week with my daughter Ashah, we spent our mornings at Starbucks because… coffee and free wifi. She needed to use my computer to do some homework, and I was writing each morning on the blog for Lent. On one of the days, I gave her the computer after I had finished writing. I must have left my blog open on the web browser, because when I looked over at Ashah a few minutes later, she had tears in her eyes and a solemn look on her face. She turned the laptop towards me and this is what I saw… Read More

Lent Day 19… The Beatitudes Are The Antithesis Of What America Has Come To Adore

Brian Dolleman - March 22, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed—this, despite the gospel. —Howard Thurman

Brian Zahnd, in his book Beauty Will Save The World, says:

The Beatitudes are deliberately designed to shock us. If we’re not shocked by the Beatitudes, it’s only because we have tamed them with a patronizing sentimentality—and being sentimental about Jesus is the religious way of ignoring Jesus! Too often the Beatitudes are set aside into the category of “nice things that Jesus said that I don’t really understand.”

Here is Zahnd’s paraphrase of… Read More

Lent Day 18… The Challenge Is To Keep Discovering The Green Growing Edge

Brian Dolleman - March 21, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge. —Howard Thurman

Today is my birthday. I’m 45 years old.

Something about that number is appealing to me. It’s not the age of a young ‘un. And it’s not the age of a mummy either.

Even though I haven’t started receiving advertisements in the mail from the AARP (yet), I am old enough to know how easy it is to get stuck, or to just coast through life, or to quit changing, learning, and growing.

Howard Thurman is on to something… the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.

Speaking of God’s people planted in God’s House, Scripture says:

They will be like trees that stay healthy and fruitful, even when they are old. —Psalm 92.14

Like trees that stay healthy and fruitful. Like people who keep discovering the green growing edge. That’s the challenge.

And while there are plenty of bad examples of aging, there are also… Read More

Lent Day 17… Greet One Another With A Holy Embrace

Brian Dolleman - March 20, 2017 - Life With God, Uncategorized

We all did it… all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.

— Ephesians 2.3-4

God embraced us.

Dirty, corrupt, broken as we were—He embraced us. He pulled us in, all close and personal. And this embrace has brought us life.

“Greet one another with a holy embrace.” —2 Corinthians 13.12

Some versions of this Scripture say, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”

That’s not something we Americans are particularly known for. Europeans do it. So do Middle-Easterners. And Ethiopians, Somalis, and Eritreans. But you just don’t see a whole lot of cheek-kissing as a form of greeting in the U.S. (and I for one am cool with that).

On Friday, the last day of our team’s work with the L.A. Dream Center, we went to MacArthur Park to hand out food and pray with people. While we were there, we met this one lady who drives 90 minutes to help—and she has done this for over 10 years. She is a real character.

Mike, one of the guys from our church, was talking with her… and I overheard him say something about how he was going to give her… Read More