Attention is one of the most valuable resources we have. Every day, we make unconscious decisions about what we notice, what we ignore, and where we focus our energy. These decisions are shaped by heuristics—mental shortcuts that help us process the overwhelming amount of information we take in.

Have you ever been reading your Bible and noticed a missing verse? Maybe you were flipping through John 5 and saw that verse 4 simply isn’t there in modern translations like the NIV, ESV, and NLT.

Samson’s story is one of the most famous in the Book of Judges—but when you really read it, it’s also one of the most tragic, violent, and honestly, ridiculous stories in the Bible.

The Wedding at Cana is often seen as Jesus’ first public miracle, but if you pay attention, only a few people actually realize what happened—his mother Mary, a few disciples, and maybe Nathaniel, who was from Cana himself. It’s a moment of transformation hidden in plain sight.

I recently had the chance to teach through some of Jesus’ parables of judgment, and I was struck by how hard it is to shake our first impression of a story. Often, the way we first read or were taught a parable becomes embedded in our imagination—even if a fresh angle makes just as much sense (or even more).

When we read the Hebrew prophets, one of the biggest challenges we face as modern readers is understanding the historical and political context behind their words. The famous prophecies we quote today were often shaped by complex geopolitical conflicts—something we tend to overlook.

Jesus’ parables weren’t just random stories dropped into the Gospel narratives—they were responses to real moments, real people, and real conflicts happening around him. And sometimes, understanding the original context completely changes how we read them.

Aionios does not mean eternal... at least not all the time.

We're exploring the depth and breadth of faith beyond just emotional experiences. Is Christianity a relationship or a religion? Can both coexist? We dive into the tension between the felt, emotional side of faith and the structured, ritualistic practices that shape us—even when we don’t “feel” close to God.

Let's dive into the misunderstood concept of the tithe. You’ve likely heard that you’re supposed to give 10% of your income to the church—but where did that number come from, and is it really what the Bible teaches?

We are exploring the often misunderstood relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees. While the Pharisees are frequently seen as the “villains” of the New Testament, there is much more nuance to their interactions with Jesus.

Born again is a term that gets thrown around a lot in Christianity. We even have a category for a particular type of Jesus-follower, a "born again" Christian. But what exactly does this term mean?

All theology is biography. That is a paraphrase of something I once heard Fredrick Beuchner say. I love it. Because the truth is, all of the ways we imagine the Divine are a product of all of the experiences we have had throughout our lives. And that is a feature not a bug.

The narrative in 1 Samuel 13 begins with an intriguing biblical translation quirk in verse 1. The Hebrew text presents an impossibility: Saul was one year old when he became king and reigned for two years. This textual conundrum serves as a powerful reminder that the essence of scripture lies not in perfect alignment of historical details, but in the profound lessons we can extract from the stories.

Robert Alter cites Shmuel Avramsky's work here to suggest that the Amorites were a group of settlers coming down from the northern Aegean Sea, and there are lots of other groups coming down from the southern Aegean Sea.

What really intrigues me about 1 Samuel is God's response to the request for a king. Even though God is willing to work with what the people want and give in to demands that God deems inappropriate and that are not going to lead them anywhere good, I'm struck by God's posture that inherited power is inherently toxic. And for me, this goes all the way back to that conversation about apparent and actual authority in communities.

In the Tanakh, 1 and 2 Kings are part of the Nevi'im, or the prophets. That's why they go together with 1 and 2 Samuel. But 1 and 2 Chronicles, those come at the very end of an entirely different section of the Bible called the Ketuvim, or the writings. In fact, they're the very last books of the Hebrew Bible. And that's because Jewish people understood them as much later books that were looking back and trying to clean things up.

In Ezekiel 37, the prophet writes about a valley of dry bones. What kind of valley is this? I'm going to say I don't think it's a real valley at all. It's a metaphor. However, I do think this valley is meant to invoke one of, or perhaps both of, two very real, very significant valleys in the Hebrew story. Those are the valleys of Hinnom and the valley of Megiddo.

A few years ago, I wasn't having a great time. Granted, very few of us were. But I had spent 20 years being a pastor and building community, and all of a sudden, I was a YouTuber, and it just wasn't a lot of fun. And so I picked up some bad habits that weren't serving me well. But as I finally started to come out of that and feel like myself again, I realized that if I wanted to continue on that trajectory, then I needed to make some changes in my life.

My guess is that we all have some general sense of the increasing lack of trust in society. And this is leading to a whole host of problems including more antisocial behaviors. Thing is, there is a lot of data that shows us a clear correlation between the number of self identified close friends we have and patterns of healthy social behaviours in our lives.