“The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he ‘likes’ them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds him liking more and more people as he goes on — including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.”
— C.S. Lewis
A short video of our wedding at the Rusty Pelican in Tampa, FL. Wedding photos here and engagement photos here. We just had our one year anniversary. I also proposed two years ago on Valentine’s Day. Quite an adventure, it’s been.
— J.S.
The world says, “Clean up your mess” and suffocates us into conformity. Jesus stepped into our mess and gave us breath called grace.
Everyone else is saying, “Catch up” and “Get over it” and “Not enough.“ God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love,” “I am close to the brokenhearted” and “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”
You will squeeze from people what only God can freely offer. You will please people up to a point: but only God is truly pleasable.
Everyone is desperately racing to be accepted by incremental measurements: but at the cross, we are equally zero, and at the cross we are equally welcome.
When everyone else abandons you in your weakest vulnerability – God does not leave. He cannot. He is the endless constancy. He is unconditional. He is the one we’ve all been looking for.
— J.S.
I love you just because I love you. It isn’t for anything else but you. Not for cash or status or my ego or an accessory, not because I’m afraid of loneliness, and it’s beyond the first bursts of chemistry. Love is hard work and it requires all of me, everything, with no guarantees, except the love in itself that’s promised and true. That’s just-because love. I love you for you.
— J.S.
We need help beyond ourselves. Like David, we need a Nathan. We need someone who can gently revoke our self-righteousness and apply truth to usurp our sinfulness.
Here’s how we see that grace is a surgical, sculpting chisel that renews us by confronting the worst in us with pinpoint precision and acknowledging our desperate need as sinners. Grace, after all, is a love that presses through sin. The God of the Bible doesn’t merely drop a truth-bomb and beat you into submission, but gently removes your self-deception and empowers you to return home. It hurts like crazy. His grace does not merely comfort, but grabs your sin by the fistfuls and kills it with the relentless violence of love. It neither condemns nor condones, but convicts and re-creates. It’s a scalpel that will work with you to the messy end.
It demands getting honest. It demands getting with those who will graciously rebuke you because they love you and know you can do better. It takes knowing that you might be wrong, that you might be blinded, that you don’t have it right this time. It takes confession.
— J.S. Park | The Life of King David
Marriage is hard. Pretty pictures and bite-sized highlights might give you a false impression that it only takes sparks and looks: but the gritty reality is work, tears, and sacrifice. It’s a dance, everyday, to compromise and serve. In the depth of this tough humility, there can be great beauty. Real joy requires a fight from our very best.
— J.S.
This is the first time anyone has ever made art out of my words. A quote from my book. I’m absolutely amazed by the beautiful skill and artistry, and the fact that anyone would make art out of anything I’ve said. Thank you so much, Alyssa!
Alyssa’s Tumblr blog and Instagram! Her art is incredible.
“In your crushed swollen chest where the hurt pulls in: Christ comes to fill the broken places like so much water in cracked earth, new breath stretching your lungs, so we may thrive and bloom and stand on our shaking feet again.
Turn. He is there.”
My book What The Church Won’t Talk About is here.
“Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do?’ When you have found the answer, go and do it.”
— C.S. Lewis
“And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”
— G.K. Chesterton
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'”
— C.S. Lewis
“For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.”
— C.S. Lewis
“Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.”
— G.K. Chesterton
Love sees a greatness in someone who cannot see it in themselves.
— J.S.
“All along, I was worse than I thought. But all long, I was more loved than I thought.”
— Timothy Keller
My wife and I during the wedding ceremony. She was crying; apparently I had a dust cloud over me.
— J.S.
One of our first wedding photos from the photographer. I proposed a year ago on Valentine’s Day, the best decision I ever made.
— J.S.
Nearly every Christian on TV and in movies is portrayed to be an extreme bigot, a closet prodigal, or a gun-toting uptight neo-con Republican. A good screenwriter can manage to squeeze all three in one.
Christians do deserve some of the criticism. In the 1980s, we over-reached our grasp by trying to politicize “Christian morality” in every platform, and we now live in the backlash of trying too hard to force the church into the state. In the 1990s, there was a “Christianese” version of everything, from Testa-Mints to Bibleman to Xtreme Youth Group Pizza Night to the Holy Land Experience theme park. Either we’re getting good stuff like Lecrae and Switchfoot, or we’re getting awful stuff like a tame Nic Cage in Left Behind and yet another Westboro picketing.
For every time that Christians call foul on how they’re portrayed in the media, I always have to say that we’re not helping our case either. It’s true that the media sensationalizes the worst of us: but we’re giving them great material.
So it always surprises me to see a multi-dimensional Christian in the entertainment media, who’s not a dichotomous banner-waver but a modest down-to-earth father, who happens to be a Christian. Hershel from The Walking Dead has some of the familiar tropes we’ve come to expect — a sage-like advice dispenser, has too-perfect Bible verses for the situation, owns an actual farm — but there’s a deep world-weariness and bemusement in his mannerisms that brings a depth we never see in screen-written Christians.
On a show that’s been panned for uneven writing, false motivations, and some bad dialogue (Things-And-Stuff Rick), Hershel’s character arc is one of the best on the show, and one of the best in any show period.
Here are five reasons why Hershel Greene is my favorite Christian on TV.
[Some spoilers follow, especially for #5.]
Continue reading “5 Reasons Why Hershel From The Walking Dead Is My Favorite Christian On TV”
It is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain 