2024 in Review

Well, the last sands of the year of our Lord, two thousand twenty-four are slipping through the hourglass. Soon we will enter the second quarter of the first century of the third millennium after the birth of Jesus Christ. As most years end, I find myself in a reflective space, but this is even more the case this year. 2025 will be the year (God-willing) that I conclude my fiftieth trip around the sun. It will also include the completion of my fourteenth year serving as pastor in my current role as well as my eighteenth year writing here on this blog. All of this has me feeling rather old mature seasoned. And of course, as all these numbers add up, it is natural to ponder the road already walked, what might lie on the path ahead, and what God might be saying through it all. I have been doing this over the past weeks and anticipate more in the days ahead.

At any rate, you know the December 31 drill by now. Here are the five most-read posts from the last 365 days. Instead of summarizing each one (as I’ve done in the past), I just pulled a quote from each that might entice you to go have a read. As always, the main reason for these year-end posts is to simply thank you for spending time reading what I write here. I’m feeling particularly grateful, this year, for those who take the time to send a private email from time to time. Comments on the blog are great, but posting things in public often changes what we say and how we say it. I very much appreciate those who take the time to send a brief note of encouragement (or rebuke) away from the public eye.

Whoever you are and however often you stop by here and however much or little you might say (publicly or privately), a heartfelt thank you to you all. It continues to be gratifying to think that the things I say here might resonate with other souls out there.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year.

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Did You Hear the Thing That Guy Said?!

“The perverse incentives of social media nurture this bizarre impulse whereby every opinion that does not comport with our own must be screamed down. We must demonstrate immediately that we are on the right side of whatever issue has floated to the surface of the sludge we daily scroll through.”

Rocky Road

“I occasionally remark somewhat playfully (but only somewhat) to my congregation that they are saddled with quite possibly the least “Mennonite” pastor in our denomination. They usually laugh politely and hope I’ll move on. Why do I say this, you may be wondering? Well, let me count the ways.”

The Darkness is Upon Us: On Despair and Duty

“‘Mental health’ is increasingly becoming a bloated and unwieldy category into which we pour all our pain and confusion and sorrow and rage and existential angst. It’s a government problem, we often seem to think. It’s something to leave in the hands of ‘the professionals’ and ‘the experts.’ They’ll fix it. Dumping the whole mess into the bucket of ‘mental health’ absolves us (we think) from reckoning honestly with our spiritual poverty, our failure to attend to our families and our communities, our unwillingness to view our neighbours as in any sense people to whom we might have something like a duty.”

Hungry Hearts

“I can’t shake this feeling that the institutional church can and should feel somehow more vital than it often does. At the very least it should maybe feel more like an AA meeting than a diversity seminar. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way.”

Is Your Eye Evil Because I Am Good?

“Perhaps part of the journey of spiritual maturity is simply growing less resentful of the generosity of God which extends always and only to sinners who don’t deserve it. And not generic sinners, not theological abstractions, but actual human beings who can be terrible and lazy and entitled and petty and vicious and self-righteous and apathetic and careless and callous and many other things besides. Sinners who do what they ought not to do and leave a trail of destruction in their wake. All of us, in other words.”