Author: Chris Taff

You Still Matter to God A few years ago I watched a man wander into the back of a church during a Christmas service. He didn’t sing. He didn’t bow his head. When it came time to pray, he stood with his arms crossed, looking like he was ready to leave the second it was…

Today’s post is an excerpt from my book The Maturity Gap, from the chapter “The Lifelong Student.” For a long time I carried a quiet assumption that maturity was a finish line — that eventually you’d learn enough, fix enough, and arrive at a settled kind of wisdom that would carry you through the rest…

At one of my past churches, there was a couple who made the coffee every Sunday for as long as anyone could remember. No stage, no microphone, no applause. They were there before the doors opened, filling the pots, setting out the cups, and they were gone before most people thought to thank them. If…

I’ve always been quick to let other people off the hook. A friend lets me down, I shrug it off. Someone owes me an apology, I tell them not to worry about it. For most of my life I thought that made me a forgiving person. Then one day it hit me: there was one…

A blacksmith once told me that you can’t tell what a blade is made of until you put it in the fire. Cold steel all looks about the same lying on the bench. But heat it until it glows, and the impurities rise to the surface — the flaws you couldn’t see, the weak spots…

I know a man in his fifties who can run a company, fix an engine, and lead a room full of people without breaking a sweat. But put him in a hard conversation with his wife and he shuts down like a boy sent to his room. He’ll tell you himself: in some corner of…

The first time I tried to splice fiber, I ruined a whole spool. I mean ruined it. Cleaved crooked, seated it wrong, fused a mess that no light was ever going to pass through. I remember standing there with a fifty-dollar cassette of scrap in my hand thinking maybe I just wasn’t cut out for…

Knowing You Matter There’s a question I spent most of my life trying to answer sideways. *Do I matter?* I never said it out loud — you don’t — but I chased the answer through the things I could show people. The work I did well. The rooms I could hold. The résumé of a…

It’s hard to be a Christian every moment of every day. You try — but coming out of a job that doesn’t always lend itself to the easiest or least stressful situations, it’s always good to pause. As I travel down this journey with my newfound outreach and ministry, I try to be the best…

I turned onto my street the other yesterday, tired and half-thinking about the day, and there it was — an ambulance parked in front of my neighbor’s house, its lights turning red and pale against the bright afternoon sun. My stomach dropped. I don’t even know them well. A wave from the driveway, a nod…