Debra Rienstra

Thankfully, I did not have to fly to London to see Ian McKellen play the role of King Lear. I only had to drive to Lansing, an hour away, and join about twenty other souls in a mostly empty movie…

“The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw—all things in God and God in all things.” -- Mechthild of Magdeburg “You think you’re special? You’re not so special.” That’s the message, by one…

“I was being unmade. I was no one.” – Orual, Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis After confirming the absolute veracity of Meghan Markle’s pregnancy—with twins!—from the gossip rags in the grocery checkout line the other day, I picked…

We chose the perfect day to hike the Dune Climb Trail at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore: seventy degrees, light breeze, a little gauzy cloud cover softening the sun. On a hotter day, this would have been a baking, miserable trek,…

As you spend a few last hours this summer in your Adirondack chair under a shady canopy of leaves—with that feeling of autumn’s imminence causing you to contemplate decline, aging, and the end of civilization—you might consider distracting yourself with…

Do not worry. I get it. You’re trying to be gentle and reassuring and I appreciate that. I do. But you realize I have anxiety/depression, right? Runs in the family. Fairly mild, and I’m managing it in all the proper…

With all the kerfuffle over Romans 13 in the news these past weeks, I wondered whether a Christian political theorist might bring some perspective to this political moment. So I contacted my colleague Micah J. Watson, and I’m delighted to…

“You’re always in the garden. For you, every hour is the darkest hour.” – Rev. Jeffers to Rev. Toller in First Reformed “It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it…

Since we have entered the Age of Resistance, it’s important to keep one’s protest muscles well-toned. With all the marching, kneeling, standing, sitting, walking out, gesturing, and pumping of hand-lettered placards up and down—not to mention furious typing on Twitter—ordinary…

Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they utter knowledge. – Ps. 19:2 One evening last winter I was startled out of a quiet moment of meditation when an owl started hooting outside my bedroom window. It…