Did you know that in the Early Church, Christians celebrated days on which saints were martyred as their birthdays? Not instead of–as. To their mind (and to ours, if we truly believe what we say we do), the day a Christian dies is the day they enter into the eternal life promised to them by God–a day to be celebrated! It’s a homecoming! Today is one such day, the Feast of Saints Perpetua and Felicity. On March 7, sometime in the early 200’s, Perpetua, Felicity, and the re

During Sunday night's Gathering, we talked about why bad things happen to good people. We came up with three ways to respond when it comes to suffering: 1. You can look at it as a formula: you do good things, you're #blessed and if you do bad things, bad things happen to you. This isn't good theology. We looked at how that idea changes over the course of the Bible into the concept in the New Testament that if you're being challenged, it's a sign that you're close enough to Go