Debra Rienstra

Thanks to Grading Procrastination Syndrome (GPS), my husband succumbed last week to Ancestry.com’s free trial offer. It turns out that finding one’s ancestors is a highly addictive activity and therefore a highly effective procrastination strategy. You may be surprised to…

The church has waited longHer absent Lord to see. Absence is the issue. You’ve been absent for a long time, and we’ve been waiting and waiting. I know we’re supposed to see you in the beauty of the lilies and…

Poor Elijah. He’s had quite a week. One minute he’s staging a spectacular god-smackdown on Mt. Carmel, calling down fire from heaven, condemning idolatry, slaughtering the priests of Baal. The next minute, he’s running a marathon trying to beat a…

Refugia are places where we are content to be small for a while. To wait, to be quiet, to practice simple virtues like hospitality and empathy. To build capacity on a small scale to prepare us for regrowth.

“Lumberjack songs? Seriously?” “Just listen. You’ll see.” “Fine.” We were road-tripping out to the lake, and my spouse wanted me to listen to an album of nineteenth-century Michigan folk songs about the lumber and shipping industries. I figured this is…

In the great, green world there were polar bears and Golden toads, and oceans with acid in heavy loads. There were coral reefs and bumblebees, dying creatures on land and rising seas.

Maybe that’s what this conference was: one sliver of the church of refugia.

“It’s disturbing to recognize that in the Noah story, God does the same sort of thing that the Babylonian gods do in their flood story.” That’s what she said, this bold and thoughtful student in world lit class. We had…

“Is this the end of the world?”“It usually is.” That zinger appears near the conclusion of the kooky and wonderful Post-Rapture Radio, Russell Rathbun’s 2008 novel, which inventively satirizes American Evangelicalism for its shallowness and materialism. Toward the end of…

For all you college students out there, it’s time to gird up your binders and get ready for a parade of professors thrusting their course syllabi at you. On the off chance that you will actually read these syllabi—my research…