In so many ways I am the opposite of Jesus' lifestyle. This keeps me up at night. I can't have authentic communion with Him while mired in the trappings He begged me to avoid.

As Jesus explained, the right things have to die so the right things can live--we die to selfishness, greed, power, accumulation, prestige, and self-preservation, giving life to community, generosity, compassion, mercy, brotherhood, kindness, and love. The gospel will die in the toxic soil of self.

If a fast doesn't include any sacrifices, then it's not a fast. The discomfort is where the magic happens. Life zips along, unchecked and automatic. We default to our lifestyles, enjoying our privileges tra la la, but a fast interrupts that rote trajectory. Jesus gets a fresh platform in the empty space where indulgence resided.

It is immature and lazy to imagine we know everything there is to know about someone before we know that someone. We don't know their stories, their histories, their real live human feelings. We don't know their favorite movies and best memories and what makes them afraid. It is unfair to take one fact, one thing they've said or we heard they said, or one thing they wrote, or someone else's experience, or a group they identify with and make a character sketch. If people did that to us, the picture would be so woefully incomplete, we wouldn't even recognize our own description.

Adoption is an answer to a tragedy that has already happened, but may it never be the impetus for one that hasn’t.

For whatever reason I was born into privilege; I've never known hunger, poverty, or despair. I have been blessed, blessed, blessed--relationally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

Usually the things we think we need become the very things we need a break from.