Nick’s Walk

“The well is deep” – and a great deal deeper than the Samaritan woman knew! During the recent Kairos retreat weekend, I had a man sitting next to me who was suffering terribly. He had been in an accident which injured his leg. The principal artery was damaged and blood flow to the toes of his feet was limited. He was in constant pain, waking up at night in tears according to another resident of his dorm. Yet he was determined to make it through the weekend. I suggested he simply sit there and not try to stand when we did or move to chapel when we did, but he insisted that he wanted everything the weekend had to offer.  I prayed that he would have the strength to make it through. During the singing of Jesus on the Mainline, one of the verses tells us :”If you need a healing, tell Him what you want.” The man raised his hands straight up to heaven and by the look on his face it was obvious first that he was telling Him what he wanted and then that he received it. His pain vanished. He came in the following morning […]

I don’t trust God in all things. For me it’s mostly money things where I have problems trusting God. I don’t know why He has always been faithful. However, when money problems come up my response always is: “What am I going to do?” I assume that it is my burden to fix it. OC says: “I am impressed with the wonder of what God says, but He cannot expect me really to live it out in the details of my life!” When it comes to facing Jesus Christ on His own merits, our attitude is one of pious superiority – Your ideals are high and they impress us, but in touch with actual things, it cannot be done. It is all very well to say “Trust in the Lord,” but a man must live.  OC has an interesting theory about this phenomena. “None of us ever had misgivings about ourselves; we know exactly what we cannot do, but we do have misgivings about Jesus. We are rather hurt at the idea that He can do what we cannot. That’s why He has us face problems. A real crisis occurs only when we get to the point where we […]

To be called a martyr these days is generally not a good thing. It usually means that someone thinks you complain too much;  that you are a great or constant sufferer (complainer). But to be a martyr is a great thing: 1 : a person who voluntarily suffers death as the penalty of witnessing to and refusing to renounce a religion, or 2 : a person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle.   That seems to be what OC is talking about when he refers to being “broken bread and pour out wine.” As he says today “I don’t care whether you love me or not, I am willing to destitute myself completely, not merely for your sakes, but that I may get you God.”  Ideally, we pour out our lives loving folks not because they love us but because God has loved us. We call that kind of love “Agape.” But the truth is we want to and need to feel we are loved and if we say we don’t care whether we are loved, we lie.     One of the sad truths of life is that often we […]

Yesterday we had some much needed yard work done. I contracted with someone a friend recommended. He showed up with two “mexicans” who began to tear through our messed up flower beds like Sherman took Atlanta. I brought the guys coffee a couple of times and fixed a big pot of gumbo. They wouldn’t come inside to eat so Rosemary and I and Tim our painter sat outside with them and had lunch. Their English wasn’t great but we learned they were a father and son from Vera Cruz. We had a great lunch time learning about their families and wondering how it would be to move away from home for years, just to be able to send money back to support our family. The dad hasn’t been home in three years.  OC reminds us today: “When a man says he must develop a holy life alone with God, he is of no more use to his fellow men; he puts himself on a pedestal, away from the common run of men.” This morning I got an email with tons of pictures from the Kairos weekend. Of course, none of the inmates are shown only team members. As I […]

“The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve.” Matthew 20:28.   In some ways, serving in prison ministry is the easiest kind of service. Much of the work takes place on the mountain tops. We’re not always present in the valleys where the real work is. Further, those served in prison ministry are so accustomed to mistreatment that they are extremely grateful when served. Regretfully, such is not the case in day-to-day church ministry.  Because of the structure of most of our churches our pastors and church staff are “employees” of those they serve. The served come to expect not only the service of the servants but the right to direct how that service is performed. Bad for the servant and the served. This situation can cause the servant to forget that it is the Lord who is boss. To further complicate things, many of the served tend to put the servants on pedestals making the servant at times tend to forget he is a servant at all. The Lord made it clear that He came to serve. “We have the idea that a man called to the ministry is called to be a different […]

I was given the privilege of leading the closing prayer last night after Kairos #48 at Angola. I “earned” this privilege by my reputation for brevity in such matters. However, as is often the case when presented with golden opportunities, I blew it. My prayer was too long. I prayed “For forty-two changed lives, thank you Jesus.” “Forty-two” is one word, or is that considered two words? In any case it was 8 letters and a hyphen, too many. There were forty-two inmate participants and clearly those lives were all changed. But also changed were the lives of the team members, the correctional officers who observed and, in some cases participated at least in the singing. All of Camp C who because of a multitude of cookie bakers, were blessed with cookies and who had to be wondering what all the  noise in the visitor shed was about. At the closing I was distracted by the faces of the very large crowd of guests, many of whom had never been to a closing and many of whom could not stop weeping. More changed lives.  Much effort is expended in preparing the participants for what we refer to as the […]

I see God move during a Kairos weekend in ways I don’t see any other place in my life. But I also get carried away for Him on such weekends unlike any other time in my life. I sing (loud). I become vulnerable. I dance (okay sort of). I continuously raise my hands. I hug criminals I just met.  I get carried away for Jesus at Angola in a way I don’t at other times and places,  even in my own church at home. I greatly suspect that I am not the only one. What if I got carried away more often? What if I acted very Sunday morning like I do on Kairos weekends? Would I see God move on those occasions as I have this weekend.? OC reminds us: “If human love does not carry a man beyond himself, it is not love. If love is always discreet, always wise, always sensible and calculating, never carried beyond itself, it is not love at all. It may be affection, it may be warmth of feeling, but it has not the true nature of love in it.” We love having “new people” in church or in ministry, because they […]

God tells us to do things less because the thing needs doing and more because we need to do it. In the Visitor Shed, Camp C, Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola, Louisiana, God is meeting needs this weekend. Some men needed a good meal; needed to know that God loved them; needed to forgive and know they are forgiven; needed to know that someone outside of Angola knows they are alive and cares about them. Others needed to be needed; needed to be used by God; needed to see that God is alive and operating in the lives of men, needed to know that they are truly blessed in their lives and that others are loving God and doing His will in circumstances beyond their comprehension . God is meeting all those needs. OC reminds us today that “dreaming about a thing in order to do it properly is right; but dreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong.  When we are getting into contact with God in order to find out what He wants, dreaming is right; but when we are inclined to spend our time in dreaming over what we have been told to do, […]