Two-Part Reflection God Is the Director October 17, 2025 “True character development,” wrote theologian Kevin Vanhoozer, “is theodramatic, understanding oneself as caught up in God’s play of making all things new in and through Christ.” Abou, my gyro-eating Muslim friend, says it another way. “God is the director.” Both are right. Vanhoozer writes from the …
When the foundation of truth is dismissed, the architecture of meaning begins to fail. The story of Babel isn’t just ancient history—it’s prophetically retold and repeated in every generation that tries to build without God. The builders at Babel weren’t villains. They were visionaries. They longed for greatness, unity, and permanence. But they believed the …
The Babel Within: What Happens When We Build Without Truth by Ron Randle October 6, 2025 When the foundation of truth is dismissed, the architecture of meaning begins to fail. The story of Babel isn’t just ancient history—it’s prophetically retold and repeated in every generation that tries to build without God. The builders at Babel …
When Grace Gets Replaced Why I No Longer Call Myself An “Evangelical” By Ron Randle From Ron’s Journal — October 5, 2026 Recently, I was invited to join a panel discussing what “evangelicals” think about the Israel and Gaza war. There were eleven of us, which is a minyan in Judaism, the quorum needed to …
So here it is—I look in the mirror and see that I am aging. What now? For most of my life, I measured myself by what I could do. Productivity was the scoreboard. Results mattered. Output mattered. But aging has a way of slowing that system down. At first, it feels as if the scoreboard …
Shabbat arrives quietly. Not as instruction, but as permission. It interrupts our habits of striving and invites the soul to rest without explanation. In solitude and rhythm, Shabbat becomes a place where attention is restored, and life is received rather than managed. It is not withdrawal from the world, but reentry into it with clarity. …
When my paternal grandmother, Elsie, turned 90, I sat with her for two unhurried hours and simply listened. I asked her to reflect on her life. She spoke slowly. Not because she could not speak faster, but because she had nothing left to prove. She told me what it was like to grow up in …
Introduction We are all being formed by something. Family, culture, success, failure, and unseen wounds quietly shape how we see ourselves, God, and others. Formation is not only something that happened to us long ago. It is ongoing, active, and often unexamined. The good news of the gospel is that formation is not final. In …
I have wrestled with injustice for most of my life, and I am still learning what it means to live in the freedom Jesus names in John 8. Freedom, as He describes it, is not simply release from restraint. It is releasing faulty sight. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” …
A Reflection on Django, Justice, and the Unexpected Kinship of Sound Liessa and I often spend two weeks each year in New Jersey. It has become a gentle rhythm marked by laughter with our grandchildren and moments of quiet rediscovery together. On our most recent visit, a friend invited us to a Django Reinhardt style …