Like many people, my parents divorced when I was young, and it was not pretty. I was angry about my childhood for a long time. I needed healthy parents. I needed a safe place to live where I was loved. I needed to be encouraged and sustained. But God didn't waste my childhood hurts. He knew all along that He would use them for good in my life and in the lives of the people around me.
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As we prayed last week as individuals, as a family, as a community, we prayed for those who have been impacted by the train accident at Hoboken Terminal. We prayed for the 34-year-old mother who died in the crash and the husband, toddler and family she left behind. We prayed for more than 100 neighbors who were injured. We prayed […]
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The community garden on 11th Street in Hoboken has enriched my life. My last local address had a private backyard I could reach by climbing out my kitchen window and down the fire escape. But my days of balancing a tray of perennials in one hand while blindly stepping down a metal ladder are over. When I moved into my new place, there was no backyard. I was soon missing my little plot, and one night prayed against all hope, “God, please give me a garden.”
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“I couldn’t understand," says Luisa. "How could God do this to me? How could He do this to my kids? Was it punishment? What did I do? How could He take Neil away? We had just had a baby.” People told Luisa to cling to her faith after her husband died, but that just made her angrier. She wanted nothing to do with God. If God cared about her heart He wouldn’t have broken it, she thought. She went from desperate anger to having nothing to say to Him.
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His thumb-sucking picked up the pace and his long eyelashes were blinking too quickly. "I don’t want Papa to die.” That moment when your child innocently exposes your inner monologue. He had overheard us talking. My dad is battling an aggressive meningioma. That’s a fancy way of saying brain tumor. It’s malignant. Cancer. Despite the best care in the country, the tumor was growing again.
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As Pastor Chris said on Sunday, becoming the people we want to be - and experiencing the shift between feeding ourselves and feeding others - means thinking big. It means asking big. It means pursuing things that are bigger than ourselves.
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When we adopt a rhythm of rest, such as the Sabbath, it's about much more than an opportunity to refuel. It’s about experiencing freedom from the idea that we’re defined by our work, or how well we fulfill society's demands and expectations. It’s a weekly reminder that our value is based not on what we produce, but who we are and who God intended us to be.
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It's become abundantly clear: A lot of people are struggling with lust, but no one likes talking about it. To be sure, the term "lust" covers a wide range of behaviors, from addictions to an overzealous love for Tinder. It all comes back to the same core emotion, and it manifests itself differently in every person. This story is Part I in a series about lust -- the many ways we struggle with it, and the ways we can fight it.
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The best books, it seems, come crashing onto us like waves, splashing cold water on old ideas and perceptions. They erode the ways we once viewed ourselves, God and the world around us and shift the sands of our thinking. They soften us like seaglass, then retreat with the tide, leaving us transformed in a way we never quite expected. […]
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For the past few weeks, we’ve talked about incorporating rhythms into our lives in order to engage with God throughout the day. The series kicked off with the challenge of living in the awareness that “in Him, we live and move and breathe.” And during the past few Sundays, we’ve discussed different ways to weave rhythms throughout the day so […]
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For many people, the church and family compartments of life are one and the same. We are often brought up in our parents' religion, and the spheres don't conflict. But for many others, church and family do not go hand in hand. Sometimes it is something we have to find and pursue on our own. And when the newly discovered church compartment collides with the old family compartment, you never know what’s going to happen.
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Week after week, I sit with people who know what their idols are, but seem incapable of eliminating them. I know I worship relationships, but I don’t know how to get rid of that. I know I care too much about how I’m perceived, but how do I stop myself from being crushed when I look like a fool? I […]
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When it comes to journeying with God, have you ever felt like you’ve been running on autopilot? Oftentimes, we make the commitment to follow Christ and then expect it to be a light and easy downhill jog from there. We assume God will move mountains instead of asking us to scale them. We spend all our energy dashing off to […]
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In the seven years after graduating from college, Diane has moved four times. And as she moved in and out of apartments, up and down the East Coast, her sense of self-worth was just as unsettled as her living situation.
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This March, Dario Torres, who has been a part of the Hoboken Grace community since its early days, is saying farewell to New Jersey and hello to Japan. For the next three years, Dario will be serving with The Navigators student ministry at Shizuoka University. This new chapter in Dario’s life is the culmination of years of prayer, spiritual growth and personal […]
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