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Sorting by × twitter facebook youtube RSS email Reformed. Done Daily. About Authors Submission Guidelines Hit enter to search or ESC to closesearch Menu Articles Poetry Reviews Podcast Blog Posts Authors Subscribe Donate Donate by Check search Filter Featured Featured A Meditation on Darkness – Part Two While I struggled with my dad’s lack of physical touch and his emotional distance, he touched me in ways that I had not fully appreciated and that have shaped me profoundly. When I consider his call, commitment, and generosity, my ambivalence gives way to acceptance and my burden of sadness lifts. May 13, 2024 Featured Articles Featured A Meditation on Darkness – Part One When I awaken night after night and stare into the darkness, I experience something more than the absence of light, something more akin to a power. This power exposes the brokenness of my life but also affords me the chance of greater wholeness and deeper intimacy with God. In the dark of night, I realize a comfort and an adumbration—a foreshadowing of my entering the deep darkness of death that draws ever closer. Featured April 29, 2024 The Lodi Bus: A Memoir The Lodi bus was the oldest bus in the Eastern Christian School Association fleet. We knew our lowly status just from riding that bus. The Association bought a new bus every year, but it never went to Lodi. The new buses went to Wyckoff and Midland Park. Even the Clifton kids had a newer bus than we did. But we lived among the heathen—not in one of the Dutch Calvinist colonies of New Jersey—and worse, among the low-class heathen. Lodi… Daniel Meeter 20 Love 0 Featured April 22, 2024 Bearing Witness: A Journey to Unbelief In some ways, it felt like evangelicalism ruined religion for me, and I don’t think I’m the only former evangelical to feel that way. I say evangelicalism ruined religion for me because it felt like I could no longer relate to any religious practice in a healthy way. After you’ve experienced religious trauma, it’s hard to trust Christians, even the nice ones. I couldn’t read the Bible or participate in any sort of religious service without feeling triggered and icky… Allison Vander Broek Love 0 Featured April 15, 2024 Sport and Religion Ultimately, sport opens windows to transcendence. One can hardly watch Usain Bolt run the 100 meters, or Simone Biles do a floor exercises, or Caitlin Clark sink a three-pointer, or witness Jim Redmond supporting his injured son Derek across the finish line without recognizing that God is at work in an extraordinary way. Paul Janssen Love 0 Featured April 8, 2024 From Convict to Mentor: Changing the Prison Culture from Within Having long since given up on God and Christianity when I entered the program, I had no appreciation of its religious aspects. However, starting each class with a devotional and prayer became the building blocks upon which I started to form a renewed relationship with Christ. Robert S. Horton Love 0 Featured April 1, 2024 Christ’s Followers Are Not Culture Warriors Lent and Easter remind me to have hope. Though the Crusades did horrible damage to people and to the name of Christ, they came to an end. Likewise, this present madness embarked on by culture warriors in America will end too. Just as God reminded Elijah that not all Israel bowed its knee to Baal, so also not all Christians in America embrace destructive, vigilante power. Some deny themselves, take up their crosses daily, follow Christ, and lay down their… Mark Stephenson Love 0 Featured March 25, 2024 My Mother is in Hospice Care Loss of memory can sometimes be a gift. I know it isn’t always, and I can imagine that there are plenty of counter examples, but as I sit with my mom and experience (for the ten-millionth time in my life) her love for me, I realize that there can be a kind of grace in not remembering a few things. It’s not denial; it’s choosing to remember her life as good. My mom wants to leave this world a grateful… Doug Brouwer Love 0 Latest from the Blog Daily blog by our regular bloggers & guest contributors. Invisible I remember debating with friends which superpower we would want. Strength to bend steel? To fly? To be invisible? May 13, 2024 Ross Davidson Is the Bible Tone-Deaf What are we to make of the invasive actions of Jesus, like putting fingers in the man’s ears and spit on his tongue? May 12, 2024 Terry DeYoung A Jesus Freak Kind of Conservative Through this hippified movement of God, my faith in Jesus was growing rapidly. May 11, 2024 David Landegent Laying Down (and Taking Up) Our Lives We talk so much about laying down our lives for our friends, as Jesus laid down his life. But if we are really following Jesus in this, we don’t just lay our lives down – we take them up again! May 10, 2024 Heidi S. De Jonge The Problem of Good This weekend I had the delight of hosting Jeff Munroe at my church. It was great fun for me, this... May 9, 2024 Laura de Jong Jerry and Betty Perhaps Jerry learned that life is always complicated but it does not have to be chaotic. May 8, 2024 Al Schipper The Embodied Sermon Recently my wife and I were among just over 15,000 people in West Michigan who took in one of the... May 7, 2024 Scott Hoezee The Right to Earn If it is spring in the Midwest, it will be windy. Ann Marie Riebe lived in the Great Plains of... May 6, 2024 Rebecca Koerselman Read More Blog Posts Reviews Unexpected Abundance: The Fruitful Lives of Women without Children Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair What Makes You Bloom: Cultivating a Practice for Connecting with Your Divine Self Literature and the New Culture Wars: Triggers, Cancel Culture, and the Teacher’s Dilemma Women Who Do: Female Disciples in the Gospels The Bear (2022) God and Country This Other Eden: A Novel The Canons of Dort: God’s Freedom, Justice, and Persistence Read More Reviews Poetry Poetry May 7, 2024 Known And Adam knew his wife, who through the knowing bore Cain. You are handsy in the Uber ... Haley Hodges Schmid 0 Love 0 Poetry April 30, 2024 Inheritance (Metaphysicals XVI) From my mother blue eyes watching from the fringes like a rabbit in long grass ... D.S. Martin 4 Love 0 Poetry April 23, 2024 Vespers: After Louise Glück Once I believed in You, still do, though belief is often evasive, often abstract ... Matthew Pullar 2 Love 0 Poetry April 16, 2024 Parable of the Lost quick breath, heart beat clock strike: each metronome tick-tocks past paths that arch like R’s bowl, back by another route ... Bethany Besteman Love 0 Poetry April 9, 2024 A Recovered Alcoholic-Addict Talks of Grace The cancer shot through Earl like a rainbow and left a crook in his arm, just right to lift up the grandchild he’d never held before. LC Gutierrez Love 0 Poetry April 2, 2024 How to Reconcile with a Brother I could build him a barn, a big one, as wide as the sky, red, to show my love and to confess I share the same blood ... Jo Taylor Love 0 Read More Poems Latest Podcasts Podcast May 7, 2024 Known” by Haley Hodges Schmid In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Haley Hodges Schmid about her poem Known.” Haley is an MFA (Poetry) candidate at Seattle Pacific University. She holds qualifications from Hope College, Shenandoah Conservatory, and Oxford University. Her work has been published in Cassandra Voices and Ekstasis Magazine. Recent projects also include The Gun Mass, an international collaborative choral work with music by Jamie Powe. She lives in West Virginia with her husband and young son. Rose Postma 0 Love 0 Podcast April 23, 2024 Vespers” by Matthew Pullar In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Matthew Pullar about his poem Vespers.” Matthew is a teacher and writer based in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of three collections of poetry. You can read Vespers” on reformedjournal.com. Rose Postma 0 Love 0 Podcast April 16, 2024 Parable of the Lost” by Bethany Besteman In this episode of the poetry edition, Rose Postma interviews Bethany Besteman...