Reading Time: 5 minutes There sat the lost, the found, the diseased, the dying, the divorced, the prosperous, the poor, the married, the single, the pretenders, the sexually abused, the jobless, the parents whose beloved had committed suicide, seekers, finders, sleepers, critics, young, old, hopeful, hopeless. The usual.
Reading Time: 3 minutes One man who had no Facebook page, Twitter feed, or social media platform AT ALL has not one but TWO major holidays to commemorate him. And a bunch of other stuff too.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Fear not! God has been here before. God stands ready, waiting for us—the orchestra—to pause and let the Soloist play. Unfortunately, if we play on, heedless to the signal, we leave God no room to perform. The musical score lies before us. Our participation with God in the silence can transform our fear to hope. The choice is ours.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Prayer is to our relationship with God as sex is to a relationship with a spouse. Like sex, prayer can skim along the surface and be about what you get out of it. Or it can be intimate, vulnerable, passionate, diving deep into the mystery of two becoming one.
Reading Time: 5 minutes The experts say washing your hands and keeping social distance are key to staying physically healthy in this crisis. Amen! But are there less obvious, more abstract daily disciplines that will help us navigate these turbulent and dangerous times?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Shit, shower, and shave also seems like a litany for our current situation. Do what you can, what needs done, check it off the list and move on. One of my favorite musicians, Bruce Cockburn asks, “If this were the last night of the world/what would I do?/What would I do that was different/Unless it was champaign with you?”
Something ordinary, with a little flare.
Reading Time: 5 minutes My first call as a pastor was a disaster. Unknown to me when I accepted the job and we moved to Illinois, the senior pastor of the church was involved in his third or fourth affair. The church was so dysfunctional it continually ignored his sin. They responded to me and my family with hate and blame for demanding they do something about it.
Reading Time: 5 minutes You and I suffer the same snake bite. We question the worth spoken into us by our Creator. By doubting our original design from God, we lost touch with God as Creator. We search for validation in ill-written dictionaries, which cry: find your worth in your accomplishments, your bathroom mirror, your bank account, your philosophy, your social media likes.
Reading Time: 5 minutes When regret becomes chronic, we become bound to the past, a past that no longer is and that we have probably misinterpreted. Hoping backward then leads to anger, anxiety, shame, false guilt, powerlessness, and an inability to make decisions. We become neurotic ghosts.
Reading Time: < 1 minute Waiting. How did Jesus’ disciples feel on that dark Saturday after Jesus was crucified? Remembering the emptiness, grief, fear, disbelief, …