Drew Downs

Make a New Normal

Faith

The search for meaning, purpose, and relationship. Our need for love compels us to seek it out, and when we find it, share it.

  • This week there are no doubt many preachers trying to figure out how to deal with Sunday. It is the Seventh Sunday of Easter. It also happens to be two other things: the Sunday after the Ascension and Mother’s Day. To the church, it is Easter 7. This isn’t to say that people in church…

  • Dropping my daughter off at preschool this morning, I almost got hit by a car. I exaggerated. I did not almost. I could have. Here’s how. My daughter’s preschool is part of a big Lutheran church. They have a good-sized parking lot. We are pretty early and there are relatively few cars. As I walk…

  • A short reflection on race, geopolitics, theology, and the role of the church in faith. Growing up in the church, I have long felt both at home in the church and like a resident alien. What some classify as evoking transcendent timelessness, I have often seen as dated and inaccessible. When exploring other ways of…

  • Walking

    On Sunday, it was pointed out that I have great enthusiasm for the Story. That talking about Jesus and what is going on here gets me going. It does. Part of it has to do with learning it, and that I keep learning it. Part of it has to do with my own experience. And…

  • A few years ago, Rose and I were visiting some friends for dinner. After the plates had been cleared and we were finishing our dessert, my friend said “I’m starting to believe that I don’t need a Jesus to have existed to believe in a Christ.” The look on his wife’s face shocked me much…

  • Every year I struggle with Lent. I struggle with what we are really called to do. Certain things are different, and yet we don’t really live all that differently. We fast or we take on new things or we mark our worship differently. But something doesn’t ring true about it for me. As I wrote…