Deus Misereatur

  There’s a risk when getting into someone else’s life story. To actually commit yourself to listening as they recount the paths they’ve taken, the dark corners in their lives where lurk wild things, the odd reasonings in their heads, and more. The risk happens at different levels. One risk is that if a person really tunes in to the tales of another’s life, as weird or dark or grief-filled as it may be, there’s a lot of commonality. ‘This person is very much like me, and I find myself thinking the same way they did.’ If you really listen, it can be eye-opening. Ashley Lande, author and writer in rural Kansas, takes a bold step by inviting you into her life story in her award-winning autobiographical narrative, “The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever: Transcendence, Psychedelics, & Jesus Christ”. It’s in both paperback and Logos Digital formats. And it is a page-turning journey through a life looking for the thing that would make everything okay forever. Simply becaus...

  You who are the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy, who has said: “ I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite ” (Isaiah 57:15). We rejoice and give you our great thanks and ask you to hear our grateful prayers offered in concert with Psalm 70: Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me! Hear the groans and grief of those hurting through sickness, weakening bodies, sad hearts and desperate conditions (…). Speedily deliver them and swiftly help them. Hear the cries and despair of those who are down and out, done in and destitute, whether in our congregation, in our city, under our bridges, or around our neighborhoods, and make haste to help them. Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life! Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt! Let them turn back because...