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40,000 human skulls. They haunt me. Several weeks ago, I was in Europe, celebrating 25 years of marriage and visiting the towns along the Danube River. It was a wonderful trip—yet what I can’t get out of my mind is the sight of 40,000 neatly stacked human skulls, in the Sedlac Ossuary in Kutna Hora, a small town in the Czech Republic.

I think I'm getting a tiny taste of what it must feel like to be a typical Muslim at a typical mosque when people twist Islam to justify their hate or violence. It happens when I hear someone like Jerry Falwell Jr. encouraging Liberty University students to get concealed-carry permits so they would be able to "end those Muslims before they walked in."

A few weeks ago I was invited to breakfast with a few other pastors from my community. It was an ecumenical group, although no one said the word ecumenical. I was invited by one of the parents at my congregation's pre-school, a Catholic who loves our school and thinks it is awesome. He has been the instigator of a community "Faith Fest" for the last few years.

Every time there is a mass shooting, I imagine myself as a victim. Perhaps you've done the same. What would it feel like to be in the classroom ... the clinic ... at the Christmas party ... going about your daily life, only to see someone suddenly coming toward you with weapons? What would you do—what would you say—if the weapon were pointed at you? What does it feel like to have a bullet enter your body, to watch your blood pour out? To think, to know you will die? Is it macabre that I imagine this?

I caught myself getting overwhelmed one night. I’d been distracting myself from my stress all day long—running from meeting to meeting, answering emails, sending e-mails, moving from one uncompleted task on my desk to the next. When I finally got home and needed to focus on my children, though, I no longer had the energy to distract myself. So the stress I had successfully avoided all day slowly began to unravel itself and take over. The power of emotion is extraordinary.

Every year at least one breakable item in my kitchen meets its end. The cause of death is usually a fall to the kitchen floor, and I am usually the perpetrator. One morning recently, before leaving the house to teach a yoga class, my elbow grazed the handle of a glass mug. So began its descent to a crash.

I’ve been thinking about doubt. It started when I read a recent piece over at Pete Enns’ blog about a pastor who confessed his doubts about the existence of God in front of his congregation. It continued when a friend pointed me in the direction of The Liturgists podcast, and particularly the episodes where the host (Michael Gungor) and co-host (Mike McHargue, or “Science Mike”) discussed their de-conversion and re-conversion narratives. Especially interesting was the shape of the faith that was eventually returned to.

The beginnings of things are sometimes hard to discern as they are happening. Sometimes we experience that lightning bolt of recognition, a sudden, stark contrast between then and now, seeing in a stranger’s face the one we are beginning to love in that same moment. More often, we realize in the midst of things that they’ve already begun, something new seeping into the familiar terrain, changing the texture like steady gentle rain saturating dry ground. What was hard and dusty becomes damp and spongy, the moment of change imperceptible.

So many of us have desires for our lives that begin: “I deserve” or “I must have.” We want what everyone else has. We ask God for very specific things. We want life to be somewhat fair. Of course, it’s very human of us to feel this way.

Since I teach stewardship and a course called Money and Mission of the Church, I often get asked my perspective on Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University program. For the uninitiated, Dave Ramsey is a best selling author, financial guru, and public speaker. His syndicated radio show on financial matters attracts more than 8.5 million listeners each week. Ramsey is also a born-again Christian and markets his curriculum, Financial Peace University, to churches.

Often on a Sunday afternoon, after I’ve changed out of my church clothes and into jeans and a sweatshirt, after I’ve had a wee nap in the comfy chair, after I’ve unwound from All Things Sunday Morning, a creeping doubt comes into my head: what difference does a sermon make? I’m not fishing for compliments here. I’m pretty realistic about my sermons and I, like everyone else, am an above-average preacher. About ten years ago I let go of worrying that every sermon I preached had to be wonderful and inspiring.

Earlier this week I e-mailed my parents an article from NPR that caught my attention: "It's Never Too Soon To Plan Your 'Driving Retirement.'" Using the story of a 94-year-old woman who decided to give up driving on her 90th birthday, the article explores this one particular challenge of getting older. In sending it to my parents (who are in their mid-sixties), I was mostly joking. Still, though, there's a little bit of interest—though not at all concern yet—behind my sharing that article with them. All things come to an end.

We want to raise social justice warriors—kids who champion equality and care for the vulnerable, and who subvert the power systems in our world by embodying the prophetic ways of Jesus. We want to activate their imagination, and to hope they'll do better than we did. Whether we admit it or not, we want our children to reflect the values close to our hearts. I know it’s tricky business imposing our own dreams on little autonomous human beings, but if I’m honest, I want my deepest convictions to become theirs. I want to partner with them in paving the ways of peace and righteousness.

The two preachers at my house have a disagreement in principle about church attendance. Oh, we’re both for it under ordinary circumstances! We grew up in families where everybody went to church. We loved Sunday school and youth group and special choirs. Really, seriously, most of the time we are eager to get up and go on a Sunday morning, to lead worship in our respective congregations. But on vacation?

We are bargain hunters, all of us. We make bargains with God, with reality or the cosmos or karma or whatever. We are convinced someone or something out there is keeping score, and that our lives are like a bet we are daily making that the things we do are somehow a reliable indicator of the things we will get.