Dec 7

Dec 7 A Wild Peace

Every Friday night at our house is movie night. We get pizza, pop some popcorn, and one of our kids selects what we’ll be watching. The quality of what they pick varies wildly. But the appetizer to the evening—and I don’t exactly remember how this started—is always an episode of the PBS cartoon Wild Kratts. Each episode of Wild Kratts, for those who are uninitiated, focuses on the the titular Kratt brothers and their team learning about and then rescuing some wildlife creature utilizing special suits that give them that specific animal’s “creature powers.”

As children’s TV shows go, it’s pretty good. Just don’t pull on the threads. Things fall apart. On a related, unsurprising note, I have been pulling at the threads of every cartoon that has graced our TV screen for about a decade. I will not go into all of my Wild Kratts quibbles right now—none of us are here for that—but I got to thinking about one of them in light of this week’s Lectionary passage from Isaiah.

Here’s the thing, Wild Kratts isn’t really that, well, wild.

I totally understand why it’s not wild. Wild Kratts is geared towards children. As such, it probably shouldn’t show a mongoose killing a cobra or a Komodo dragon feeding on the corpse of a water buffalo that it had earlier injected with venom (because that’s what they do!). They talk about it, but never show it. All the animals are really chill with the Kratts coming into their habitats and cuddling their babies. Again, the show probably shouldn’t have the Kratt brothers weekly getting mauled by a wild animal because once again the bros got way up into some creature’s business. Even though that is what actually would happen in the wild, it wouldn’t make for a good children’s show. It would make for a very educational program to be sure, but not one that parents would be keen on showing their kids.

Dec 1

Dec 1 Hope is the Thing with Teeth

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

We can get behind swords being turned into plowshares. Well, there might be a few organizations and corporations that would not be thrilled about weapons being turned into gardening tools. But for most of us, the picture presented in the second chapter of Isaiah is an appealing one. The whole world coming together. Nations no longer entrenched in war against one another. The picture the prophet paints is the great hope of the world. It’s hope like a toasty cup of hot chocolate. We can sit down with it by a crackling fire at Christmas time and feel safe, comforted.

And yet…

That sentence right before swords are beaten into plowshares grabs my attention every single time. “[The Lord] shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples.” The NIV and CEB translations say that God will settle disputes. This hoped for future is not just some happy time in which every slate is wiped clean and the past is the past. Peoples are held to an account. There is a reckoning here.

Nov 23

Nov 23 Weekly Lectionary: Let's Try This Again

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

For about three years, I would pick one of the Revised Common Lectionary passages for the forthcoming Sunday and write some kind of reflection about it. Sometimes short, sometimes long, sometimes earnest, sometimes goofy. But I stopped doing that a little over two years ago. Writing, which was once as natural as breathing, has become exponentially difficult for me of late. With apologies to Anne Lamott, I’m going to try to bird by bird this sucker starting with resurrecting this old practice. It might be rough, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

Jeremiah 23:1-6
First Reading for Reign of Christ Sunday (Year C)

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord.”

I’m going to try my best to be honest: Reading this my mind immediately goes to the dumpster fire and, I don’t know, port-a-john pyrotechnics that are presently engulfing our political and religious lives in America. And I want to steer out of that. It’s there. It’s important. We need to stay informed and be vigilant. But I am just too exhausted by it tonight.

Nov 14

Nov 14 What Does God See?

Chris Cox

What does a day look like to God? Is it something the Divine ducks in and out of? Does God experience this all with us? Is the commitment to being Immanuel so strong that God sits with us day in and day out?

What does One do with 7 billion breathing, broken, and beautiful humans? I have no idea where the Infinite would even begin. I’m finite so I can’t imagine. But I wonder if God is horrified and heartbroken by us. When a school shooting happens or war breaks out or someone chooses the easy lie over the hard truth, does it frustrate God? Does it seem like some sort of cruel Groundhog Day where a hideous history repeats itself in a myriad of ways? Does God hope that this time someone will do something? Maybe today is the day that the scales tip and enough people will be brave enough to do the right thing. Maybe God knows the day. Maybe God knows it’s not today but still hopes like when you watch an old movie, but hope that maybe, somehow the beloved character escapes a cruel fate.

And I wonder how God holds back. There is a song that I love dearly. It wasn’t written about God, but it’s about God. A line that I’ve always clung to mused “I heard you laugh / I heard you sing, ‘I wouldn’t change a single thing.’” I have hoped against hope that is how God feels. That God, seeing the outcomes of an infinite number of ways this creation was going to shake out, has stayed the course on this way. But there are some days where I do not know how God could laugh or sing. How could God now want to change a day where even one child starves? I cling to that idea, but I also hold it at arms length. The tidal wave of hurt that crashes into each day seems like a bug in the system; like something that could and should be changed.

Oct 9

Oct 9 Every Song Becomes a Psalm

Chris Cox

I always looked for God in music. Lyrics and melody always grounded me in a special way. Growing up in the evangelical church all music was supposed to be about Jesus. Yet even as I ventured outside the safe confines of Christian music, I still kept listening intently for God in every song I heard. I felt like there was something special about finding the divine in a thing considered secular by my tradition. Working later at a Christian camp, I felt like if I could ground a skit or a drama scene in a Coldplay song or something else a kid might hear on a radio that it might stick better with students. They could hear God pop up outside the confines of the church. And so I always listened for God in music.

I have discovered that when you try to look for God—if you dedicate yourself to that quest—you will find God even when that was never intended. “Wonderwall” by Oasis is absolutely not a song about God and yet the line “Maybe you’re going to be the one that saves me” still stirs something spiritual inside of me. I projected my faith into the world and I found that faith in many places. The reward has been that, in the moments when I need it, every song becomes this connection to this faith that sustains me and keeps me afloat. I can’t not hear God calling to me from a car stereo.

Sep 16

Sep 16 Beeps, Boops, and Prayers

Chris Cox

Saying “I had a medical scare” seems melodramatic. It was medical but I was never really “scared.” Concerned? Yeah. Spooked? Sure. It’s just that calling it a “medical scare” seems unfair to people that actually have medical scares. Semantics aside, I woke up Friday morning with numbness and tingling in my left hand and foot, which over the course of a visit to our local urgent care facility spread to my leg, arm, and—for a delightful short period—the left side of my face.

The doctors at urgent care felt like this all warranted a visit to the emergency room and so I spent most of the day at one of the fine hospitals in our city undergoing a battery of tests. To cut to the chase, I didn’t have a stroke. Whatever was going on with the left side of my body was likely some sort of combination of a bulging disc between two vertebrae and possibly stress. So there are lessons to be learned.

To reach these conclusions, I had to get a couple of MRIs done. I had never been in an MRI machine before and I now have no desire whatsoever to get in one again. If you had asked me prior to Friday whether I was claustrophobic, I would have laughed and said, “Oh, of course not.” But after that session in a high tech coffin, I totally understand why people are afraid of enclosed spaces. I guess the thing I said at the beginning about never really being scared isn’t exactly true.

Sep 3

Sep 3 Turning Over Tables (Sermon Video)

Chris Cox

This is video of the sermon that I preached this past Sunday at The Bridge worship service in which I tell the story of cafeteria crime spree in my middle school, look at the passage where Jesus drives the moneychangers out of the Temple, wrestle with another mass shooting, and talk about our calling as Christians to flip over tables in the world.

Sep 1

Sep 1 Turning Over Tables (John 2:13-22)

Chris Cox

Sermon Manuscript

The cafeteria at R.P. Dawkins Middle School had a stage on one end. Unfortunately, its purpose was not to enliven our lunch period with musical dinner theater, but to make the room multi-functional for orchestra concerts, spelling bees, and for school administrators to make outlandish promises about high school to gullible 8th graders that high school could not keep. This raises a logistical problem. What are you going to do if a room is supposed to house dozens of cafeteria tables during the day but at night needs rows of chairs for a concert in which kids on the cusp of puberty sing Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All”? Hypothetically.

Well, the fine folks at Rudolph Periwinkle Dawkins Middle School made a reasonable and—I am sure—a very common choice: You purchase cafeteria tables that can fold up and easily be rolled into storage. Problem solved. Except…there was one problem these reasonable administrators did not anticipate. You see, it was a little too easy to fold up those tables. And middle schoolers have an uncanny ability to discover those kind of bugs in the system.

One day in the 7th grade—just as we were being dismissed from lunch—a band of juvenile ruffians stood up around their lunch table. Their ringleader pulled and turned the latch, the group folded the table up, and then—as if caught by flashing blue lights on some street corner in West Side Story—they scattered in every direction. A surprised giggle rippled through the hallway as we spilled out of the cafeteria. Suddenly storming out after us…well, we had this assistant principal who looked like Judge Judy. And we called her Judge Judy. She did not suffer fools. And she was upset. She came tearing out of the cafeteria seeking vengeance on the gang of pre-pubescent suburban scoundrels that dared to bring chaos to her ordered cafeteria. And when one rattles the unrattle-able Judge Judy, it turns what would have been an isolated incident into a lunch time crime spree unlike any I had seen in my young life.

Aug 5

Aug 5 Grant Us Courage

Chris Cox

I saw my youngest son be brave today. It is the first day of school. His older brother has been looking forward to getting back to the routine, especially after discovering one of his best friends would be in his class. Liam has not been as eager to make the return. Holding his hand as we walked into the building, I worried about him. We dropped Jim off in his classroom and then weaved past new backpack-toting students and their doting parents.

We arrived in his first grade class. His teacher taught EA when she went to school here; which thrills us and helps him a little. Slowly we work our way over to a desk with his name on it. A girl from his class last year smiles and waves at him. He puts his backpack in the cubby and then sat down. EA and I stooped down to tell him goodbye. He hugged us both, used his arms to wipe tears out of his eyes, and told us goodbye.

He didn’t beg us to stay. He didn’t run after us like he did last year. He was nervous. He was sad. But without any prompting from his mom or I, he decided he was going to stay and try. I can only imagine how difficult that was for him. I know it was colossally tough. He has told us for weeks that he didn’t want to go back. He went back today and he stayed. That 6 year old is my hero.

Jul 19

Jul 19 Rebirth (Sermon Video)

Chris Cox

This is video of the sermon that I preached this past Sunday at The Bridge worship service in which I wrestle with Romans 6, particularly the famous 23rd verse which states “The wages of sin are death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” I also get interrupted by Siri on my watch and whiff big time on a fish-related joke.

June 15, 2026

Dangerous Memories and Unfinished Futures

“’Do this in remembrance of me.’ Jesus invites you to commemorate his betrayal, death, and resurrection. His invitation makes space for ‘dangerous memory,’ a memory that, as post-Holocaust Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz tells us, ‘puts pressure on and questions our present because in it we remember an unfinished future.’ Memory can unsettle the unreconciled present and open up a future for the hopeless and the forgotten, the failed and the oppressed….Remembering keeps the ghosts alive so that they may warn and comfort, haunt and inspire the living: dangerous memories that rush toward an unfinished future. Making the absent present allows for processing grief, strengthening commitments, and opening up vision. Such remembrance commits you to work for a future for those who have been forgotten, erased, and left behind.”
-Hanna Reichel, For Such a Time as This, 88, 89

I believe that most of us experience an internal tug-of-war between the past and the future. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ titular demon supervisor advises his underling Wormwood that one of best ways to keep a human from doing good is to keep them ping-ponging between those two times that are not the present. One keeps trying to recapture or reach towards moments that are mist. It can keep a person from doing something.

The quote above resonates with me because it harnesses the past and unfinished future into a catalyst that animates our present. We remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus because it means something today and compels us to presently work for the Good that is already here, but also not yet. We remember the hope and pain of the past to do something that help us take some sort of step each and every day. We realize that the hope which exists within the gospel story is not yet fully realized. Many people are still being left behind and forgotten. The realization, as the theologian Metz states, puts pressure and questions on the present.

June 1, 2026

First Day of Pride

Being a parent forces you to take a close look at yourself. Of course, you don’t have to be a parent to self-examine, but there is something about the reality that another living human is under your care and protection for the foreseeable future that makes you take stock of your strengths, weaknesses, and beliefs. For example, I used to think I was a far more patient person before I had kids; like superhumanly patient. And then a crying toddler shows you the folly of that belief. On the flip side, time has moved on and having two teenagers affirms that, yes, I am ridiculously patient and that has been a strength as a parent.

Among many other reorienting moments that came with parenthood was full acceptance of our LGBTQ+ siblings. That process began many years earlier. As someone who studied religion, I knew that the biblical case against these individuals was not nearly as airtight as I was previously led to believe. Science and stories from people gave strong indication that this life was not a choice. And I had met gay and lesbian folks who were good people. The old axiom that you will know a tree by its fruit applies here.

But the tipping point was holding a tiny infant who I loved more than I thought possible and knowing that I never wanted him to be ashamed of who he is. I did not want a potential future in which one of my children came out as something other than heterosexual with the fear that we would not love them. Not accepting my child was not even conceivably on the table. So we raised our kids to know that LGBTQ+ were beloved members of God’s creation.

May 24, 2026

Not a Defeat If You Can Find a Way to Laugh About It

There is this typical ice breaker question that is some variation of “If you could have dinner with anyone famous living or dead, who would it be?” And one of my steadfast answers for almost twenty years has been Stephen Colbert. Through both The Colbert Report and The Late Show, he has given hours upon hours of laughter and more than enough on which to ponder. I feel like we’d have a lot to talk about since we are both unabashed nerds, products of the Palmetto State, and he just seems like a good hang.

Beyond all of that, I appreciate how honestly and humbly Colbert approaches his faith. There have been numerous times over the years when his comedy and conversations take a turn into the spiritual that is challenging and convicting. I remember an episode of The Colbert Report where one minute he was making a joke about Ben Franklin’s predilection for French prostitutes and then organically made his way to the following quote:

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

Then there are the interviews that he has conducted on The Late Show. Colbert has said that he sort of found the heart of his show when he had a conversation with then-Vice President Biden about grief. Indeed the loss of his father and brothers at a young age has led him to create an empathetic space to explore loss in the midst of celebrities promoting their most recent projects (my mind immediately comes to a conversation that he had with Andrew Garfield about the loss of the actor’s mother).

May 21, 2026

While I Breathe, I Hope

On the way to school, the youngest burrowed his head into my arm. “I don’t like that you’re getting older.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you’re one year closer to death.”

“There it is.” That’s my kid. Very sweet. Very sensitive. Brutally, bordering on inappropriately blunt. “Well, it’s better than the alternative.”

“Getting younger?” He thinks for a second. “Oh…dying.”

“Yeah, you can’t get younger.” I scratch him on the head. “And hopefully I have a ways to go. Ideally, I’ll still be kicking around when you turn 43.”

“You’ll be 73. So that’s reasonable”

“Yeah.”

“Granddad will be 103.”

“Less likely. But maybe. I hope he is as long as he’s happy.”

“And healthy. Happy, healthy, and alive.” Then he goes into a bit from an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine which makes me laugh.

Birthdays, as my oldest posited this morning, are kind of weird when you get older. Or at least they morph into something different from the second Christmas-esque excitement when you’re a kid. Because there does get to be that point where it creeps into your mind that you are a year closer to death. And that forces you take stock of your life which is a hit-or-miss affair due to being human’s volatility.

May 18, 2026

To Jim on his 16th Birthday

One day last week, I picked you up from school after took one of your AP exams and then I moved over to the passenger seat so you could practice driving. In the midst of being hyper vigilant about your speed, how quickly you stopped, how close you were to the side of the road, and what every single other car on the road was doing, I had a distinct moment of looking over at you and realizing that so much is changing. And we’re only at the start.

Today you turn 16. You are about to wrap up your sophomore year of high school. You’ll take a driver’s license test in just a few weeks. We have three more summers before you go off to college. There are times it seems like yesterday when you were sitting in the living room watching cartoons with a couple of dozen superhero toys. There are times it seems like last week when you were a newborn sleeping in my arms.

The feeling of you being 16 is kind of like being the passenger in the car while you are driving. I have a ton of confidence in you and trust you. And I worry about your lack of experience in a big, sometimes frightening world and whether I have taught you well enough. I am wary of everyone else on the road. I wonder if you are going too fast even though you are going an appropriate speed and I am the one who encouraged you not to go as slow in the first place. It is all very exciting, humbling, frightening, and new.

April 21, 2026

What Nintendo Can Teach the Church

Christmas 1988. My brother Taylor and I receive the Nintendo Entertainment System packaged with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and we have been fans ever since. We have grown up with the Japanese company’s gaming systems; the adventures of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Link, Zelda, Donkey and Diddy Kong, and more have been a consistent presence in our lives. Even though we are in three different states now as adults, Taylor, my sister Shari, myself, and our kids will get together every so often and play Mario Kart online. We love Nintendo, which is a weird thing to say about a corporation that makes a billion dollars but it is what it is.

With all that said, I loved the Keza MacDonald’s book Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. Not only is it an engaging journey through video game history through the lens of Nintendo’s iconic (and less iconic) franchises, but the book also has a great deal to say about creativity, community, and culture. In fact, it is that last idea that got me thinking about how this video game company can teach the church (or any other organization) even as I am a bit of an outsider to that world presently.

Here is one of two quotes that jumped out at me from the chapter “Splatoon” which looks at how Nintendo continues innovate and create over 40 years into its video game endeavors:

April 12, 2026

Easter Orphans, A Lost Cat, and A Tightrope Called Hope

“Happy Easter?”

That is the first thing EA said to me as I woke up on Easter morning. I stretched and rubbed my eyes.

“I still believe in Jesus. It’s just the church that I’m not sure about.”

Some context: This was the first Easter in our 20+ years of marriage (and likely in either of our lives) in which we did not have a church to attend. It’s been about a year since we’ve gone to church as a family. Honestly, the church that we attended after I stepped down from working in a congregation had a tall order to tend to our hurting family. It was a good group of people, but the services and community never really clicked with our boys. Then early last year, I got moved to a Sunday morning shift. EA tried for a bit to go by herself but it wasn’t what she needed. In the end, I was gone for about eight months before anyone in the church really noticed and we decided to take a break.

I acknowledge my uncertainty about the church is a bit over-dramatic. Of course, there are great churches out there. There are wonderful people in congregations where my family and I have experienced the most pain. It’s akin to writing off burritos for life because you got violent food poisoning from one (This is based on a true story; I have not written off burritos just that particular Chipotle location). But the church hurt is real. As is the MAGA-fication of the denomination in which I grew up that feels so antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. So we don’t have a place to call home and it’s weird and sad and understandable.

April 1, 2026

Lent Fail

Absurdist Note: I really want to add “Woo-ooh!” after the title. If you know, you know.

I have not pulled off this year’s Lenten disciplines the way that I set out to. When this 40 day period began, I set out to take on this fasts/spiritual practices:

Stop drinking Coca-Cola
Stop eating French fries
Stop playing Disney Solitaire on my phone
Do a daily devotional from Richard Rohr’s Wondrous Encounters
Write a blog five days a week

When the war in Iran began and threw another log on the fire that is the world, it pained me both spiritually and physically. One of the ways that played out was headaches and since headaches were already part of removing the caffeine of Coca-Cola from my life, I decided I probably shouldn’t compound a problem and began drinking Coke again. I have had French fries a few times; not many, mind you, but enough to break up the fast. There have been several multiple day stretches where I did not do my devotional. And my efforts to blog five times a week quickly fell by the wayside. I have managed to keep from playing Disney Solitaire, but that still puts my Lenten average in Mendoza Line territory.

March 29, 2026

An Awkward Parade (Revisited)

Several hundred, some may say several thousand, years worth of anticipation hung thick in the air. Like summer humidity that sticks to your shirt the second you step outside, you couldn’t avoid it if you wanted to. Especially not during Passover week.

There was a guy making his way into Jerusalem; a guy claiming to be the Messiah. This was nothing new. He would not be the first that people claimed would save us. There had been tons of guys going around saying that they were the One; saying that they were going to show Rome what’s what. So a would-be messiah making his way to Jerusalem was about as common as a singer-songwriter making their way to Nashville.

But this felt different. He seemed different. Now there was a fair amount of debate whether he was the right or wrong kind of different. For starters, word got out that he had tried to keep a lot of the messiah talk and even tales of his miracles under wraps. But it is difficult to keep those kind of stories quiet: dead men walking, the blind seeing, demons plunging a herd of pigs over a cliff, and thousands fed from a lunch meant for a single kid. You can tell people to keep that hush-hush all you want, but it’s not going to happen.

March 24, 2026

Blooming Broken Branches

In front of our house there is a branch that is barely hanging on to its tree. The limb is a casualty of the ice storm that tore Nashville earlier this year. As we cleaned up the debris afterwards, we tried to tear it off the tree as we did with a few other broken branches out front. But this branch was more stubborn than the others. So even though it is hanging on by a thread and nearly perpendicular with the ground, it remains as a reminder of a storm.

Now that branch is in bloom. Still hanging on by a thread, still touching the ground but now with flowers and the buds of leaves. It was a surprise at first. We did not really expect that branch to still be alive as it was barely connected to its source. But it is very much alive and now a symbol of beautiful tenacity. Even though it looks askew, I cannot imagine trying to rip that branch from its tree and I don’t think my sons would let me if I wanted to.