by jakeowensby | Feb 24, 2023 | 1 Lent, Matthew 4:1-11
It’s not like me. Honestly. But I confess that I binge-watched the entire first season of The Good Place when it first hit Netflix a few years back. Friends had been assuring me that I would love it. One of the main characters is an ethicist, and I used to...
by jakeowensby | Dec 9, 2022 | James 5:7-10, Patience
In the early 80’s I was still a grad student and teaching my very first intro philosophy course. Some class sessions went pretty well. Others not so much. On one particular morning my lecture had plunged the students into a terminally bored stupor. I spent the rest of...
by jakeowensby | Sep 3, 2021 | Mark 7:24-37
“Would it kill you to give us a break here?” That’s what a prayer for help can sound like when we’re raw with fatigue. It’s a little edgy. Maybe not so pious-sounding. But there’s an honesty and sincerity about it. It’s the earnest prayer of the overwhelmed. It’s...
by jakeowensby | Jul 23, 2021 | Uncategorized
“I don’t experience God at all.” A church-going friend shared this with me recently. Life has been tossing her more than her fair share of struggles and disappointments. She talked to me about her tenuous health, her dwindling finances, her crumbling career, and her...
by jakeowensby | Apr 14, 2021 | Uncategorized
This is an excerpt from my new book Looking for God in Messy Places: A Book about Hope. Joy and I had been stunned to learn that our daughter, Meredith, had a hole in her heart. She was an energetic, happy baby. During a routine healthy-baby visit, our pediatrician...
by jakeowensby | Nov 6, 2020 | Amos 5:18-24
Our daughter Meredith was seven years old when a psychologist told us that she is autistic. Assuming that Meredith might have some garden-variety learning challenge, my wife Joy and I had sought testing for her. The word “autism” fell on us like a hammer blow. Knowing...
