Lee Hinkle

On the Way sometimes close to the edge with a lovely wife and 5 great children walking with me

[Camus @newstart_2024]

Matthew McConaughey just gave one of the most honest, grounded takes on spirituality I’ve heard:

“I’m happiest and most connected spiritually when all day is prayer… but truthfully, come Friday, I still need Sunday morning.”

He needs that weekly ritual—church, inventory of loved ones, rolling through his mental Rolodex, seeing people in their truest form, wishing them well, then ending on an honest image of himself (not Instagram happy).

That’s when humility clicks:
“Humility is just admitting you’ve got more to learn.”
Shoulders back. Confidence returns. “Now I’m engaged. Now I can be involved.”

He was raised Methodist—gratitude was the foundation. Still is.
Every night at the table, his family goes around: one thing each person is grateful for.

No preaching, no performance—just quiet, consistent gratitude and weekly reset.

In a world drowning in noise and ego, McConaughey keeps it simple:
Pray with eyes open all day.
Still show up for Sunday.
Stay grateful.
Admit what you don’t know.

What’s your version of “Sunday morning”—the ritual that forces humility and resets your week?

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

https://t.co/irjdPCZYXw

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

how did I not know that the Pointer Sisters started as a quartet, wrote a country song that hit number 13 on the Billboard pop charts and 37 on the Billboard C&W charts, and won a Grammy for best country vocal performance duo and group in 1974. You should have a listen

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

@brheiny Thanks for the post Ben

[Danielle (Dani) Treweek @danitreweek]

Church, the longer we perpetuate the myth that singleness:
- is bad because it was not good for man to be alone
- equals loneliness
- is a relational tragedy…

… the longer we will play a part in driving isolated, despairing and disillusioned people to seek romantic “intimacy” where they absolutely know (the illusion of) it can be found.

We can and must honour marriage as good… without making it “the good”. There are real people on the other end of it all.

[Vatican News @VaticanNews]

Pope Leo XIV meets with participants in the Symposium “Nicaea and the Church of the Third Millennium: Towards Catholic-Orthodox Unity," and highlights the many aspects that unite Christians, as the Church celebrates the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea.

https://t.co/7Wv6fHAuQu

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

Oscar Isaac says Guillermo del Toro's #Frankenstein is 'not a horror movie at all'

"It's all heart and feeling ... It's a dark, brooding drama"

(via @Variety)

[Danielle (Dani) Treweek @danitreweek]

As an Australian evangelical I found this interview ( 🔗 in next comment) incredibly interesting. Actually, it’s quite extraordinary and really helped me understand how and why much of what I’m seeing on this platform has developed. One of the key moments for me was this one:

“And that’s a question of how do you approach politics? Do you do it in a spirit of generosity, or a spirit of fear? Do you do it in a spirit where you respect other people‘s fundamental rights and dignity? Or do you do it in a way that is name-calling and vicious? Do you do it in a way that is forgiving, that maybe doesn’t attribute the worst motives to people who take a different view? Or do you demand retribution?

And that’s where the church has really fallen down, and that’s where I think it has the most to contribute. A more Christlike tone for Christians in politics.

If Christians, especially if white evangelicals could move from modelling often the behaviours of the worst of social media to modelling in politics, the tone and behaviours of Jesus Christ I think that would do a lot to heal our country and maybe also the church.” (Timestamp 38:50)

And here’s the kicker….

The one who is imploring Christians to be more Christlike is an atheist, gay, Jew. Might he be onto something?

Link in next comment 🔗

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

Looking for a Aurora ticket https://t.co/MQDGVE0SMW

[Ben Hein @brheiny]

My favorite passage from any theological work, from Herman Bavinck’s Common Grace. I’ve thought about these two paragraphs every day for nearly three years. This, to me, summarizes everything that matters.

The Christian religion does not, therefore, have the task of creating a new supernatural order of things. It does not intend to institute a totally new, heavenly kingdom such as Rome intends in the church and the Anabaptists undertook at Munster. Christianity does not introduce a single substantial foreign element into the creation. It creates no new cosmos but rather makes the cosmos new. It restores what was corrupted by sin. It atones the guilty and cures what is sick; the wounded it heals. Jesus was anointed by the Father with the Holy Spirit to bring good tidings to the afflicted, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captive and the opening of prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, and to comfort those who mourn (Isa. 61:1, 2). He makes the blind to see, the lame to walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised, and the gospel is preached to the poor (Matt. 11:5). Jesus was not a new lawgiver; he was not a statesman, poet, or philosopher. He was Jesus—that is, Savior. But he was that totally and perfectly, not in the narrow Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or Anabaptist sense but in the full, deep, and broad Reformed sense of the word. Christ did not come just to restore the religio-ethical life of man and to leave all the rest of life undisturbed, as if the rest of life had not been corrupted by sin and had no need of restoration. No, the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit extend even as far as sin has corrupted. Everything that is sinful, guilty, unclean, and full of woe is, as such and for that very reason, the object of the evangel of grace that is to be preached to every creature.

Therefore Christ has also a message for home and society, for art and science. Liberalism chose to limit its power and message to the heart and inner chamber, declaring that its kingdom was not of this world. But if the kingdom is not of, it is certainly in this world, and is intended for it. The word of God which comes to us in Christ is a word of liberation and restoration for the whole man, for his understanding and his will, for his body and his soul. Sin entered the world, and for just that reason, "God so loved the world…” This word has often been seen as a burden too heavy to bear. Rome has made of it a yoke that oppresses and represses the natural. Nor are the Protestant churches blameless in this regard, for they have often turned the gospel into a new law. But that is mistaken. The gospel is not a law but good news! It came not to judge but to save. It is supernatural, because it has welled up from God's free, generous, and rich love. It does not kill but makes alive. It does not wound but heals. It is pure grace. And this grace does not cancel nature but establishes and restores it.

[Makoto Fujimura @iamfujimura]

I’ve heard @timkellernyc make this point many times. “How much of the gospel do you think you understand?” once he asked a room full of pastors. Many confided in me afterwards that they would have said “90 some percent?” being a pastor (you kinda have to…right?)

Tim said “I understand perhaps only 10%, may be less”.

He was talking about “knowing” in the deepest epistemological and somatic sense. That’s why the gospel is needed for Christians, as much for a non believer. We need to “preach to our hearts” constantly so that we can love what God loves. Then we need to live out what we believe, even to love our enemies.

I said to myself “if Tim is at 10%, I may be at .0001%”. 😬

I endeavor to make art with that “.0001%”. Art is impossible to begin with, so even that smallest percentage is enough to start.

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

@Claragroene Should say let it go but I l’m going to say tip

[Stephen McAlpine @smcalpine6]

Weak Leadership isn't Just Weak, it's Dangerous https://t.co/EEHqQZDTWJ via @smcalpine6

[Stephen McAlpine @smcalpine6]

Newphoria https://t.co/QA1Yiegeo7

[chuck degroat @chuckdegroat]

When I work with pastors who are awakening to the harm they’ve caused, in almost every case they’ve 1) never addressed their own unresolved emotional issues and the harm they experienced, 2) were formed in formation-by-information cultures, 3) were formed in cultures where Christian character was an afterthought and where external competencies were prized, 4) experienced profound loneliness in their lives which extended to their adult lives, and 5) felt like they needed to inspire/demand the respect and attention they deeply longed for and missed out on in their own childhood.

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

@NicholasMcD Look up Howard the Duck

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

If when someone comes to you saying, “(blank) just did/said/etc” and your response is “that’s just (blank)” then at the least you are complicit but more likely you are empowering the behavior. “That’s just” is never the appropriate response.

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

@mattwilcoxen @Roryshiner I agree with much of this however I wouldn’t say Pence is “nice” He is bland and that is unappealing. Also Trump never pretended to be anything other that who he is. Pence said he was one thing but compromised to become VP so he has no integrity for many evangelicals

[Lee Hinkle @pkontheedge]

@NicholasMcD Laugh, I just gave them a standing ovation!

[Chad Bird @birdchadlouis]

Stewards of Our Scars

Years ago, while Frederick Buechner was speaking to a group of Christians at a Texas retreat, he recounted a painful incident from his childhood. Afterward, a man named Howard Butt approached him and said, “You have had a good deal of pain in your life, and you have been a good steward of it.”

His words took Buechner aback. He had never thought of pain, and its impact on his life, in terms of stewardship. But the more he reflected on what it means to be a steward, the more he realized how true the man’s words had been. Later, he wrote, “If you manage to put behind you the painful things that happen to you as if they never really happened or didn’t really matter all that much when they did, then the deepest and most human things you have in you to become are not apt to happen either.”

Whatever sufferings we have endured, self-inflicted or otherwise, are scars our Father has granted us as a sacred duty.

Stewards do not own that for which they are responsible; they are called to faithfully manage what another has given them. Our scars are God’s gifts to us. They are the means Jesus uses not to anchor us to the past but to propel us into the future as those who know the wounding power and healing grace of God.

-from my book, Night Driving: Notes from a Prodigal Soul