Charleston was where America split apart in 1861. Maybe it's where America comes together in 2015.

I believe that we're all created in the image of God and we're all fallen sinners. And I think we can recognize that as we look backward in history.

Moral cowardice at the expense of the vulnerable unborn is both wrong and pathetic.

When my sons arrived in the family, their legal status was not ambiguous at all. They were our kids. But their wants and affections were still atrophied by a year in the orphanage. They didn't know that flies on their faces were bad. They didn't know that a strange man feeding them their first scary gulps of solid food wasn't a torturer. Life in the cribs alone must have seemed to them like freedom. That's what I was missing about the biblical doctrine of adoption. Sure it's glorious in the long run. But it sure seems like hell in the short run.

Charleston was where America split apart in 1861. Maybe it's where America comes together in 2015.

For too long, we’ve called unbelievers to “invite Jesus into your life.” Jesus doesn’t want to be in your life. Your life is a wreck. Jesus calls you into his life. And his life isn’t boring or purposeless or static. It’s wild and exhilarating and unpredictable.

The biblical picture is not one of an upward, linear progress or a precipitous, downward decline. It is a more complicated picture of a fallen world in which there is a gospel of power.