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measured and found wanting
Chrystie Cole Chrystie Cole

measured and found wanting

Many faith-based conversations about the body are sorely lacking. Sometimes, we overcorrect, rejecting anything to do with the body and treating it as less than spiritual. Youth leaders center women’s bodies in conversations around sexual purity and pastors center it around a husband’s fidelity. Other times, we spout trite Christian cliches as a verbal ascent to the goodness of the body. But in many ways, Christians are just co-opting cultural trends and “Christianizing” them. “Stewardship” can be just another word for diet and exercise. “Fearfully and wonderfully made” can be a sanitized version of “Real women have curves.” Or as one podcaster put it, “Instead of doing something to be thin, we are doing it to be healthy.” But the goal is the same. As she goes on to state, healthy is often synonymous with thinness.

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Psalm 36 | Spiritual Refugees
Chrystie Cole Chrystie Cole

Psalm 36 | Spiritual Refugees

Where do you run when the world feels hostile and unsafe?

In a world where wickedness still exists, we desperately need God’s steadfast love to guard us. Psalm 36 is for the weary and worried, for those who wonder if goodness will prevail, and for those who need to remember that our hope rests secure not only in the defeat of evil, but in the overwhelming goodness of who God is.

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Borrowed Hope
Chrystie Cole Chrystie Cole

Borrowed Hope

What do you do when, no matter how hard you try, you can't get to Jesus?

In Mark 2, a paralyzed man's friends literally dug through a roof to get him to Jesus. When the crowd blocked their path, they didn't give up—they got creative. They carried their friend up to the roof and started digging, lowering him down right at Jesus' feet.

Sometimes we need others to carry us when we can't walk on our own.

Hope is communal.

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