A sense of loneliness can consume us when we feel no one understands us. To our discredit, we often shun any sympathizers, believing instead that it is solely our burden to bear. It's much easier to wallow in misery than to hope. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus is our great high priest, who is not unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. The double negative here is appropriate, confronting the lie that wants to convince me Christ is not the superior Savior He is. Indeed, He knows exactly the temptations we face, and yet was without sin. The sympathy of a Savior is glad tidings of great comfort and joy!

There is a tendency of mine to equate faith to a savings account, expecting my initial deposit to yield its return while doing nothing or very little about it. But with faith there is always something to be obtained for it to be the conviction of things not seen. Faith demands an active striving that I admittedly grow weary in. Didn't I muster enough faith in the past to be exempt from this present difficulty? There is a rest that remains to be realized, and as long as there is a "today," let us exhort one another to hold fast our confidence to the end.

I sometimes have this habit of drifting into my own inner thoughts, completely ignoring any human around me. In these moments I often think I've adequately heard or answered someone, only to find that the dialogue has only taken place in my head. Drifting may seem rather innocuous, but its effects are surprisingly destructive at times. I usually drift without knowing - oh the plight of the introvert! This is usually met with the ire of the other person, which snaps me back to attention.

In matters of faith, drifting can happen with great subtlety until the appeal of our Savior gradually loses its luster. We become dull to the reality that we are a saved people - people of hope already delivered from that which condemns us. So let us pay more attention lest we drift away the message of salvation that we so joyfully proclaim this season.

The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the grand jury's decision not to prosecute the police officer who shot him has sparked an outrage that begs the question - is it justice we prize, or satisfaction?

To have justice there must be fairness. We live in a world that is incredibly unfair since the introduction of sin in Genesis 3. Much can be said about the unfairness of the entire Ferguson situation from both sides. It's unfair that an innocent shop owner was robbed. It's unfair that we have racial prejudice. It's unfair that a police officer felt threatened for his life. It's unfair that a life is now gone.

There isn't a satisfying resolution to this situation. A young black man is dead, and an officer's life is irreversibly altered. A community is in outrage. The Ferguson incident stands as a reminder that we as humans are inevitably flawed.

We want justice, but we know that we won't ever live in an entirely just world. So we seek satisfaction - a substitute for true justice, which will only be had when sin is finally done away with.

Our restlessness needs to be channeled towards faith. Our longing for our Savior's return ought to burn ever more greatly. Come, Lord Jesus!

I'm not much of a strategist when it comes to board games. I don't necessarily have a plan formulated before I start. This isn't because I'm not competitive - I hate losing without a fight.

Though I may not be able to articulate a strategy per se, I do know that winning involves taking appropriate risks when the opportunity presents itself. This, I find, often yields its reward. Overthinking can lead to a paralysis that hinders you from the game.

In life, the sensible (now growing older) side of me often rationalizes decisions to its safest (or most convenient) outcome. I do not know the work of God who makes everything, and yet I so often I think I do.

One of the highlights of my trip to London this March was visiting the British Library and seeing their collection of manuscripts from the Magna Carta to hand scrawled lyrics of Beatles songs. It's amazing how written words have such power to speak. They transcend time, still potent and latent with meaning. How significant, then, that out of all the ways that God could have revealed His gospel to forthcoming generations, He chose the written word. There's something to be greatly prized in this! If this makes me more of a language snob, so be it.

Wisdom is hard earned, yet a little folly spoils it - bearing truth that a good name is worth more than riches (Proverbs 22:1). Wisdom is conditioned upon humility. That is, we must be taught to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). It can't be had trusting one's own mind (Proverbs 28:26), but is to be asked in faith of God who gives generously to all without reproach (James 1:5-6). Truly, it is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of all wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). Oh Lord, how I need Thee!

Yesterday was election day - a reminder that in our country we have the right to a say in our government. Perhaps this is why I at times so fiercely safeguard what I determine as my rights. What emerges is a sometimes skewed sense of what is mine, to the point where I demand rights that perhaps were never mine to claim. When I acknowledge a Savior who never asserted His right to treatment befitting his authority and kingship, I'm completely flattened. He yielded His rights, yet He of all people, should have had every right!

Mabel Williamson, who had to deal with the loss of her own rights as a missionary in China in the 1950's, spoke of Christ in this way:

No right to a soft bed, and a well-laid table;

No right to a home of His own, a place where His own pleasure might be sought;

No right to choose pleasant, congenial companions, those who could understand Him and sympathize with Him;

No right to shrink away from filth and sin, to pull His garments closer around Him and turn aside to walk in cleaner paths;

No right to be understood and appreciated; no, not by those upon whom He had poured out a double portion of His love;

No right even never to be forsaken by His Father, the One who meant more than all to Him.

His only right was silently to endure shame, spitting, blows; to take His place as a sinner at the dock; to bear my sins in anguish on the cross.

He had no rights. And I?

(Mabel Williamson, "Have We No Rights?", Chapter 12)

The San Francisco Giants, perennial underdogs of Major League Baseball, have proven pundits wrong yet again in earning their third trip to the World Series in five years. I absolutely love the storyline that follows my favorite team, of how a bunch of players with inferior stats winds up virtually invincible when it comes to postseason play. I root hard for the Giants. The investment in being a fan comes with its special brand of "torture" so appropriately quipped by one of the Giants broadcasters. Giants fans are perpetually tested in their faith, as so often the team teeters between total collapse and absolute brilliance.

So last night when they took the NL Pennant in truly historic fashion, I screamed and jumped up and down in near delirium. Their win was my win, and a bunch of men in orange and black further cemented their rank as heroes in my eyes.

A victorious faith is a well rewarded one. And it feels so, so good.

The media has been abuzz with the decision of 29-year old Brittany Maynard to end her own life in a matter of weeks after a terminal diagnosis of late stage brain cancer. Her decision brings light to the Death with Dignity Act, which pushes to allow end of life decisions "to be made solely between a patient and a physician." What first compels us to Maynard is her young age, and her newlywed status. No young, vibrant woman with so much life ahead of her should have to die. This is grievous, and we mourn the unfairness of it all.

But what I mourn more is Maynard's decision to dictate death on her terms, with the belief that it allows her the dignity that her diagnosis has robbed her of. It is as if to say that we can atone the cruelty of death by choosing it rather than succumbing to it. But death has already been swallowed up in victory, and in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we are assured that death does not have the final say. It is not my intent to trivialize Maynard's suffering, or the injustice of one so young coming to terms with the end of her life, but to say that our dignity has been secured by one who loved us to endure the indignity of the cross so that we may have life.