Category: The Spiritual

This year I will celebrate my 50th anniversary. In 2020, that’s a pretty big deal. There have been good times and bad times. There have been days when we weren’t thrilled with each other. At no time in those 50 years, did I consider ending my marriage. More importantly, at no time could have I conceived of my wife walking away. That has created the security that has cemented our relationship.  I’m not saying there is nothing one of us could have done to force the other to end it. Certainly, intentional harm to the other or one of our offspring or abandonment or infidelity might do it. Such things seem unthinkable. Yet even in such extremes, the thought of forgiveness isn’t out of the question. Why do we think less of our relationship with Jesus? To talk of “once-saved-always-saved” is to invoke charges of heresy. My response is to ask that if there is something that can break my relationship with Him, exactly what is it? I’ve never gotten a satisfactory response. Maybe it’s like marriage and walking away from Him would do it. Why would I ever do that? I find Father Richard Rohr a bit “out […]

Have you ever had a really bad day? I don’t mean a day when you wake and there’s no coffee or your team loses or you burn supper. I’m talking about days you want to crawl under a table or back into bed. These are days that are not just gray but black and stormy. These days tend to grow and become, like the theme from Friends,  a week, a month or even a year. A bad day,  week, month or year can disable us. Bad days aren’t just unpleasant. They can kill our joy and blunt our purpose. They are disabling and disturbing. They are bad enough when we think we know the “why.” They are much worse when we can’t really put our finger on the cause.  I find that to break the funk I need to ask some questions. Am I being a Winnie baby?  This is always my first question because the quest usually ends here. My funk is usually based on my ingratitude, my failure to live in Thanksgiving. When I recognize the cause, I have some tried-and-true solutions.  I have some pictures of life in a dump.  Recently I came across this:   I […]

This is a very divided world. In Washington, votes seem to be 51-49 most of the time. There is talk about “breaking ties.”  The divide is wide. Folks on either side can’t seem to understand or even hear what’s being said across the chasm. There has almost always been more than one side to anything, but, it seems to me, the divide has never been so deep. It’s not as if we believe we are choosing between reasonable alternatives. For each side, it seems it’s the difference between good and evil. They just can’t agree on which is which. My side is 100% right and the other is 100% wrong. Those in urban areas differed from the country folks. Half of us love the President and half hate him. Half get their news from Fox and the rest from the “mainstream media, which isn’t really “mainstream” but more like midstream. Half believe Fox isn’t “real news” and the rest believe the MSM is mostly “fake news.” Who’s to blame? Each side points to the other. Here’s my take: It’s not flesh and blood; it’s Satan. Before half of you call me “fundamentalist fanatic” while the other half shouts “Amen.” […]

A good friend of mine just returned from Nepal. One of his observations interested me: We were able to spend time in many home churches throughout the city of Katmandu. It reminded me so much of the early church. For them, their relationship with Christ is EVERYTHING, and the Great Commission is urgent. God is not a hobby or something they add to their list of things to do. He is everything to them, and they willingly walk into the darkness because they know they bring the light of the Gospel with them. I have heard very similar observations from those who have observed the church in areas of poverty and persecution. Jesus warned of this problem. He spoke of the difficulty of the rich in entering the kingdom. He saw a rich young man walk away because he was too attached to his “things.” He compared the difficulty of a rich man following him to the task of a camel getting through a needle: impossible without God. For those who have much, it is difficult to see Jesus as everything. We tend to apply the camel/needle analogy to those who are “richer” than ourselves. The problem in America and […]