My transition into motherhood was hard, and not for the normal newborn reasons. I expected to be tired, and I expected to not know what I was doing. The hard part was what was going on inside my head.

Verse after verse in the Bible point us to the peace in living simple lives. The kind of life not centered around stuff but one in which we “have learned to be content whatever the circumstances (Philippians 4).

“The kind of mother I think you really want to be is a Mother of Repair. This kind of mom is focused on reconciliation. This kind of mom does not shy away from the hard stuff. She rises and meets the mess head-on. She understands that God is in control and that her role isn’t to fix everything and make it all better but to just be there with truth in her words and grace in her hugs. Children, kids, teenagers, young adults.... they are all going to mess up, often in very big ways. During life’s darkest moments, children don’t need a mom who dances in the kitchen. They need a mother of repair.

Looking back over all the pictures coming out of “A Call to Arms: an honest conversation about manhood and the gospel” the word power just keeps coming to mind. I mean, just look at all those fighter jets! You can close your eyes and imagine the roar of the powerful engines as the plane crosses the sky. These jets served as the perfect backdrop for an event focused on a powerful issue: safeguarding our minds against sexual sin.

We all want authentic community because that means we know each other well enough to notice when there is a need. It means we’re paying attention to each other.

You are weary. But you too can take hold and claim that thrill of hope. Hope in God’s great rescue plan for His weary children. We get a glimpse of this gift at Christmas; in this Silent and Holy Night.

We hear the personal, heartbreaking stories of families struggling through medical issues, and we want to help, we’re just not sure what to do. So for many of us, we let the compassion for these families fade as soon as the news cuts to commercial. Because when the problem is so big and overwhelming and complex, well, how could one person make a dent?

Have you ever felt really young inside? Like, in one moment, your internal experience is closer to that of a much younger self. This could be in response to a regrettable incident with your spouse, an instance of immaturity and course joking, or a scenario where you have felt immense shame or overwhelming anger. Many of us, especially men, wrestle with these feelings and are driven to put on a mask and avoid authenticity and transparency in an effort to uphold cultural expectations of what men are supposed to be. However, this does not give us the opportunity to become curious, explore these uninitiated parts of ourselves and to begin a process of masculine initiation.

On the one hand, what Scripture tells us about God’s sovereignty is comforting. As a believer I rest in passages like Romans 8:28 that promise that all of life’s circumstances providentially work together for my good because all things that occur, occur because they were within God’s Will. But on the other hand, in my flesh, I’m troubled by that same thought.

The task of spiritual formation in today’s world is arguably more difficult than ever. Thanks to the advent of the smartphone, disciples have never been more distracted. These devices provide us with instant access to more information than our brains could ever dream of processing. Social media, in particular, is in constant competition for our attention. The never-ending feed of status updates, tweets, and pictures can draw us in for hours of wasted time we can never recapture. The implications for our growth as disciples are massive and virtually impossible to overlook.

Our initial plan was to find one homeless person in a park downtown, get him some dinner, listen to his story, and share the love of Christ with him any way we could. And that is what we did. At the end of the night we asked if we could return the next week and our new friend said yes. None of us had ever done anything like that before. We had stepped way out of our comfort zones in an attempt to do good works for God.