Precious Words

I am officiating at my grand daughter’s wedding next month. She is very special to me and I really want to do a good job. I have been working on my comments for the wedding for weeks. Every time I see or hear anything good about marriage or love or weddings, I mentally add to my comments. I know, however, that I need to keep my words few. Attention spans are short.  It’s amazing how wasteful we are with words. It seems we are bombarded daily with more words than ever, yet fewer really meaningful words are spoken. We all admire the person who speaks rarely, but when they speak it is well worth listening. We don’t seem to learn from this but keep dumping out words like a garbage truck at the end of a full day of collections.  We need to learn that words are precious. They provide us with the opportunity to really make an impact and a difference. They have to be carefully chosen and wisely released. Like most things timing is everything. We can’t learn the value of our speech from television or social media. I’ve learned I can’t learn it from my fellow […]

Obsession

The church is full of the obsessed.  Some are obsessed with the end times. Speaking  constantly of Christ’s return and the rapture and our country’s place in all of it. They are counting days and sharing visions. They can’t remember the last time they shared Jesus.  Some are obsessed with sin. Some with their own but most with the sins of others. They weep and moan and pound their chests and point their fingers.  Some are obsessed with Israel. They want to speak Hebrew, blow shofars, live in Israel and be Jewish. They pray for Jerusalem but forget China and the Sudan.  Some are obsessed with their churches, their ministries or their missions. It’s all they talk about. It’s on the tshirts they wear and in the words they speak. They are convinced they have it right and that most everyone else is wrong.  Some are obsessed with things of the Spirit. They follow miracles. They think in tongues. They teach only of fruits and gifts. They are lacking in love and starving for grace. Some are obsessed with politics; some left and some right. They seem to believe that salvation is in Washington and Jesus came to save […]

Badly Broken

This week saw the series finale of the popular series Breaking Bad. Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned crystal meth manufacturer finally met his long expected and and well-deserved fate. The series was brilliantly written and acted but was probably too dark and stressful for most church folk. For that reason I thought I would summarize the moral lessons learned from the series and save a few the necessity of watching the series. 1. We are all capable of great evil. We are all badly broken. We sometimes forget that “but for the grace of God” there goes us. It’s popular to believe that most folks are basically good. It just isn’t so. We are all basically sinners, who fall far short of the mark. Think about what the world will be like when the church is removed post-rapture and the restraining power of the Holy Spirit is removed. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be tribulation. 2. We are all capable of enormous self-deceit. It’s amazing how we can justify bad acts as being performed with good intentions. Walter manufactured life-destroying meth and eventually murdered allegedly to make sure his family was financially secured. […]

Exercise Less

We have a rule when we go into Angola that we don’t wear clothing that has anything written on it, no writings, no pictures, no logos, nothing. It’s not always easy to find clothes that satisfy this rule. We tend to be walking bill boards. We advertise our teams, our politics, our churches, our favorite places to eat. Sometimes it’s not real clear what we are advertising or why. This is a good rule. In the prison we are trying to be Jesus to the residents. Not everyone has our politics, cheers for our team or goes to our church. So why put up unnecessary barriers. In any case, the walking bill board thing has to be one of the least effective means of advertising. I don’t think I’ve changed my mind on a single issue because of what someone wore. More often than not, these walking writings just irritate me. It certainly doesn’t make me love the wearer any more or want to know more about his or her savior.  I wish we would apply this rule to our team meetings. It’s just a little bit harder to love someone who supports a team you hate or has […]

The Unexpected

On my way to church Sunday morning I stopped at Waffle House for a quick breakfast. The unexpected happened. I found one of my tires was flat. I was dressed in my Sunday best and had promised my pastor I would be at church at 9 to do something. Thanks to a waitress and cook my tire was changed and I made it to church on time. I had coffee and left a very large tip instead of having breakfast as planned. Turns out all my tires needed changing so an $800 unexpected expense later I have a new set of tires.  I have a doctor’s appointment today. I expect it to go fine. I have been taking my medicines as prescribed and watching my diet. But an errant finding during the exam could send my life in an unexpected direction. At our house a wedding has been in the planning stages for weeks. Come November 3 we expect a wonderful day, but chances are it won’t turn out exactly as expected. Hopefully, the unexpected happenings won’t be too significant and awful but will be delightful and memorable. The reality of the unexpected is what makes banks and insurance […]

Releasing the Bait

Our home borders a swamp. There is a drainage ditch that comes within a few feet of our driveway. The denizens of the swamp, snakes, turtles and alligators often inhabit the ditch. When the gators get too big we have to have hunters come in and remove them. It’s interesting how they do that. They tie a piece of raw chicken to a fishing line and cast it in the ditch. The gator snaps onto the bait and the hunter just draws him in until he is close enough to tie a loop of rope around his neck. There is no hook in the raw chicken. All the gator would have to do to escape is let go of the chicken, but he won’t. Today I’m hosting at church the final segment of Offense, the Bait of Satan. The release of offense is discussed and it turns out we are pretty much like gators. We just won’t let go of offense. Even when it is to our obvious determent. When someone sins against us, the sin is all theirs, when we hold on to the offense the sin caused, it becomes ours. It’s the reason Jesus told us that […]

Having Church

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to prayer. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. daily those who were being saved. Acts 2 We attended the SALT meeting last night. We have gone to  the last three meetings and it has become a regular part of “church” for us. I really enjoy it because it contains elements of “church” as it existed in the first century but which have slipped out of modern Sunday morning church services: the communal meal and interaction between members or fellowship time. Oh on Sunday mornings we have a “meet and greet” period but it doesn’t allow for significant interaction between folks. For a church to become and to act like the family it’s suppose to be, there needs to be interaction. We need to know each other, before we can care for and pray for each other. We need to connect. This is the purpose for this and other “connect” groups we have at Amana. The hope is for every one to […]