Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration. At Pentecost, we celebrate violent winds, tongues of fire,… Read more

My view of the end of time isn’t as dramatic as it used to be. The biblical accounts of the end are no longer hidden, cryptic messages waiting to be uncovered and deciphered. There are no secret societies and cabals. There aren’t dramatic wars and nations plotting against one chosen people. There’s no new world… Read more

The end of time has always fascinated me. I grew up in a household that held firmly to a dispensational reading of revelation, choosing to take the metaphors and symbolism as mysteries to unravel so we could understand our future fate. We were pre-millennial, believing that the second coming of Christ was the precursor to… Read more

What does it take to be a man? This question haunts the halls of churches obsessed with de-feminizing Christianity. Apparently, the church has grown soft and feminine, thus driving men away from the pews. So, we need to rediscover the power of masculinity and lure men back to church, thus reversing the feminization of Christianity… Read more

Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration. There is this song we sing in my church… Read more

Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration. Amos 5.18-24; Psalm 70; 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18; Matthew 25.1-13… Read more

Friends, welcome to The Book of Common Words, where we explore the Christian spirituality of being human through poetry and prose about my life, art, and the Christian faith. I’m your writer, Aaron. This publication is 100% reader supported. Thanks for joining me in this exploration. I was desperate for the Lord’s favor. I wanted… Read more

I can’t stop writing about God. I want to. I want to quit theology and write about life and love and art and Azaleas, but I can’t stop all these words about God. For the majority of my life, I’ve dedicated vast amounts of mental energy to thinking about God, to theology. I’ve read countless… Read more

I’m a leaver. I left the church. I was on my way out in my late twenties, but didn’t completely cut the cord until I was in my yearly thirties. I stayed completely away for seven years. That may not seem like a long time, but for someone who was raised in the pews, someone… Read more

Proper 17, 2023Matthew 16.21-28 Psychology was the bad guy. Since we are spiritual beings, anything having to do with how we think or feel was a spiritual matter, and psychology denied that reality, replacing God with the self as the center of one’s life. Psychology was self-help, self-centered, self-serving. It was all about making a… Read more