#2

The Sunday Mask

Hard Talk #2: The Sunday Mask (Why "I’m Fine" is Killing Us) You’re sitting in the car in the church parking lot, and the air is thick. Maybe you just had an argument, maybe the bills are overdue, or maybe you’re just exhausted. But the moment you step out and straighten your clothes, the mask goes on. By the time you reach the greeter, the words are out: "I’m fine, thanks! How are you?" We’ve turned "I’m fine" into a spiritual requirement, but it’s actually the very thing ke

Terry Hunsaker

Jan 282 min read

Deep Dive #4: The Gift of the Silent Phone

In the kitchen of my childhood home in rural Missouri, there was a heavy wooden box mounted to the wall. It was our telephone, and for long stretches of my youth, it was remarkably quiet. It didn't "ping" or vibrate, and it certainly didn't follow me out to the barn. Back then, being "unavailable" wasn’t a choice—it was simply a fact of life. Today, we live in an era of radical availability. We carry the world’s demands in our pockets, and we’ve mistaken "constant access" f

Terry Hunsaker

Deep Water Series #3: The Rhythms of the Season

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” It is spring, and the gardening season has once again captured my imagination. I find myself dreaming of tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, and squash in anticipation of a mid-summer harvest. These past few days, I’ve been out in the dirt, getting my hands dirty and my brow wet with sweat. The only trouble is that most of the effort so far has been weeding. It is ha

Terry Hunsaker

The Deep Water Series Part 2: Lessons from a Missouri Sandbox

I grew up on a farm in rural Missouri during a time when quiet wasn’t something you had to seek out—it was simply the norm. We had a wall telephone, but it almost never rang. There was no television flickering in the corner, no radio providing a constant soundtrack to our chores. When my older sister headed off to grade school, even my playmate was gone. I was left with a sandbox, a few simple toys, and my imagination. In those hours spent in the sand, I learned the langu

Terry Hunsaker