Matthew Hinshaw

“The truth of grace is that our sins—even our nastiest ones—are not the things that prevent us from being loved. Those very flaws are what make us human, create our need for others, and make our reception of grace possible. And in confessing them we become closer to one another and God than ever before. Honesty about our sins becomes the path, not the barrier, to relationship.”
― Justin Whitmel Earley, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship

“The stress levels of a young mother—alone with her husband and children in a city to which they’ve been transferred for work—are quite different than those felt by her grandmother, who would have had far greater financial and even medical burdens, but who also had an extended family and a community of other young mothers just steps from her front door.”
― Russell D. Moore, The Storm-Tossed Family: How the Cross Reshapes the Home

“We are still young, but we have done something remarkable already. We have stayed together. I think where we find ourselves is extremely significant. Significant because the next seven years, I think, are going to be final in a way that the last seven have not. In the next seven years every one of us will be in our thirties, some nearing forty. We are already starting marriages, families, careers, and settling into cities. In the next seven years those things are going to become more and more entrenched. The concrete we’re pouring into the habits of our lives is going to dry, and we are going to become the kind of people that we’re going to be for a long, long time. Let me put it another way. The college years and the early twenties lend themselves to a kind of emotional radicalness where you actually can and do completely shift your habits, and we become new people. That window, however, is likely closing. Thus, I think now is the time to consider seriously what kinds of people we are becoming. We have a good start, but I think the next seven years will be far more determinative of what kinds of friends we will be in the long run. The next seven years will show: Will we have the kind of friendships that sustain us through rocky years in marriage? Maybe more important, will we have the kind of friendships that sustain us through the difficulties of not being married yet? Will we have the kind of friends who live as examples to one another’s kids? Will we be the kind of friends who support one another financially if a job or business falls through or support one another emotionally if we hit dead ends in our careers? Will we be the kind of friends who won’t ignore and won’t let one another get into bad emotional, physical, sexual, or financial habits? I think the summary of what I’m longing for, the reasons why I decided to write all this down, is I see the beginnings of a covenant between us. And I see the possibility of covenant relationships forming in the long run. And I want to name the goodness, to give words to what the Lord is doing among us. I want to call one another not simply by what we are but by what we are hoping to become. I think that might be “covenant friends.” I leave whatever form it takes to you, but what I hope is that we begin to think and talk of one another in these terms, in terms of covenant relationships, where we acknowledge that the Lord is binding us together in ways that we don’t have the option to separate. In conclusion, I think our next seven years may be our most important, and I want us to consider pushing into those years consciously, as covenant friends. It might go a long way toward what I hope for as our end. This is what I imagine: that in the long run we will look at one another and say, “I have a lot of friends, but none like you.”
― Justin Whitmel Earley, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship

“God cares not only about immaterial souls but also about the material world. We’re not spirits, zipping about. We’re bodies, too. And that whole complex—body plus soul—is always in a particular place, at a particular time. We’re right here, right now. Place matters.”
― Ben Sasse, Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal