Pure Joy! It’s Your Party!
It’s complete pandemonium, folks! The crowd roars as the team is announced. They break into song as the players stride to the podium. The roar is deafening as they hoist the championship trophy. It is ours. After decades of waiting and a lifetime of work, we have won it! Pure joy! This is the scene as […]
The Nesting Tree
You would have loved my mom. She was diligent and dutiful, industrious and ingenious, fashionable and fastidious, a loyal friend and devoted spouse. If there were room-moms back then, she would’ve been a great one. If there were sports-Mom awards given, she would have been well-decorated. She cooked a mean pot roast, prepared an awesome peach pie and baked chocolate […]
Can we hurry patiently?
Patience is an ever present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or some thing […]
Did the Resurrection really happen?
Does it matter if the Resurrection actually happened? This was the question we considered in my adult Sunday School class at a church I used to belong to. I was a regular at Sunday school, where we considered issues of faith and its practice as a matter of course. Sunday school was organized and led […]
Fear is fun to blame
~ from Jon Acuff today ~ A few months ago I had a conversation with my wife Jenny at our dinner table. Here’s how it went: Jon: I’m too afraid to write this book. Jenny: No, you’re too lazy, but fear is fun to blame because then it’s not your fault. Jon (and the chorus of millions): Grenade. […]
What have you kept?
It’s a season of subtracting for me. I’ve spent a lifetime accumulating. Collecting books, papers, files, friends, travels, vehicles, a home, a church, jobs and a few paychecks. I have a lot, just not a lot to show for it. I invested a lot of myself in the doing, but from the distance of years, it diminishes. I rifle through boxes of […]
Use it or Lose It, It’s Biblical!
Use it or lose it! We didn’t invent the phrase. It’s been around for generations, maybe for millenia. My Grandfather, though I never knew him to lift a weight or go for a jog, applies the adage to a quite familiar, but hard to swallow, parable which concludes… I tell you, to all those who have, […]
One little thing stands in your way
Really, again? When Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” what Peter really wanted to know was not how long he ought to keep forgiving, but how soon he could stop forgiving!* Jesus, of course, knowing what Peter is up to, […]
I’m there if you need me
Even the least of us must do our part… How often do you run into an Einstein, Beethoven or Karl Barth? Someone has said such people are like four-leaf clovers, but what really keeps the pastures green, the cows fed, and the bees happy is the vastly more numerous ordinary, run-of-the-mill, three-leaf variety.* I’ve got […]
Getting it Straight from the Source
We live in a world where new and improved is always better than old and decrepit. Of course. New has the benefit of advanced methods, complete research, and dedicated study applied liberally over all that has come before it. Old, well that was just a starting point. Those were the blocks we stood in to […]