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I’m just regular dust: A reflection on Ash Wednesday
I’m not stardust. I don’t sparkle. I’m not made of the magical stuff from far off and distant places. I’m made of ordinary dust. The dust that is below my feet. I’m made of the stuff that this earth is made of. I’m a part of that cycle. My essence is not connected with something […]
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Why are you still a follower of Jesus?
Recently, a friend and colleague posed this question on social media. It’s a great question and one that isn’t asked enough. Particularly with all the misuses and abuses of Jesus and Christianity for causes which are harmful, hateful, and opposed to the very message of the Gospel. These are not new misuses and abuses, they […]
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A Wonky Advent Wreath
We recently took our Advent/Christmas decorations down from the attic. The tree went up, we fought with the lights (as we always do), our two-year-old almost destroyed the ornaments, and we began the annual adventure of rediscovering what we actually have in the Advent/Christmas bins. One thing I knew that we had, however, was our […]
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The Light that Follows the Darkness: A Funeral Meditation
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,” writes C.S. Lewis. The Cambridge Professor and writer lost his wife to cancer after only four years of marriage. His reflections written during that time were later published in a book titled, A Grief Observed. Lewis continues, “I am not afraid, but the sensation […]
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Echoes of 1857
In 1857, the Reformed Church found itself fracturing when a faction saw themselves as purer than everyone else. Their separation had nothing to do with their ability to follow their consciences. They were not pushed out, they were not forced to function against their beliefs, and no one was forcing their beliefs or practices into […]
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To be Reformed is About Belonging
What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ… What does it mean to be Reformed? I fear that we haven’t done great P.R. of late, leading to some sobering definitions and associations with […]
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The Hidden Life
Those who know me know that I have been called to a new place. No longer in the Midwest, I make my home in the East, in a place also settled by the Dutch, only this place was settled over a hundred years earlier than in my home. Though, the traces of Dutch settlement lie […]
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To Our Home’s New Owner
Welcome to your new home! We are so happy that you were interested and even happier that you’ll be staying a while. We are very sad to leave, perhaps it’s good for you to know that. We’re not leaving here to get away from here, but because we’ve been called elsewhere. We intended to stay […]
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Rethinking the Artificial Binary
In 1857, my church communion, the Reformed Church in America, experienced a secession of several churches because those churches and ministers thought that the things that divided them were greater than those which held them together. The fact of the matter, however, is that the things which divided were far smaller than those which united, […]
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Digressions in Church Polity: The Reformed Church and Its Constitution
Over the last couple of years, there has been a lot of talk within the Reformed Church in America (RCA) about the Constitution of the RCA and the role that it plays in the life of the church. Indeed, this culminated with a directive from the General Synod of 2015 which formed a large task force […]
Matthew van Maastricht
Writer | Speaker
Matthew van Maastricht 