Here is a little story for your consideration:
In the adult Sunday School class, Pastor, Noah Tal, was on fire, really into his message from God. We knew that God spoke to Pastor Tal, he had made that clear in his books. He had explained that God had shared with him parts of God’s complicated message. It is a message that Pastor Tal had passed onto us in a series of books which he called “God’s Plan Revealed”. Continue reading
Derek Hill, member of the leadership team for the Bible Society Group of Great Britain, has an article on the “What Christians Want To Know” website entitled “Doers of The Word: 6 Tips to Living Out Your Faith”. Hill does not imply that his six tips are the “keys to the kingdom”, but they are a good start to living out your faith. Included among those tips were four that really stood out for me. My comments follow each tip: Continue reading
Tuesday, November 8, 2016 the world came to an end! Christ returned and God’s wrath is being visited upon all of us! The Russians are coming! We elected satan! No, no, no, no!
None of those things are true, not even close! But, why am I afraid? Why do I have trouble breathing at times and why do those feelings crowd my life first thing each morning? Why do I feel like I lost a loved one? Is this what grief feels like? Is that what I am feeling? Yes, it is a form of grief! Continue reading
What does the voice of God sound like to you? Have you ever heard it? How do you hear it? Under what circumstances? Did the voice seem familiar? Perhaps you thought it was just your conscience giving you trouble. Had you heard it before? Can you sort out God’s voice from all the other voices that you hear? Was it a loud voice, or was it a small voice, even a whisper? Continue reading
When was the last time you examined the elements of your faith journey? You know, those ups and downs, that inspirational moment when an event or a sermon, or some Bible study made a real difference. Maybe it was a crisis in your life or the life of your family. Perhaps the change happened in an ambulance on the way to a hospital.
Whatever that was, how did that change make a difference in your life? What followed that part of your faith journey? Did you find yourself more open to other’s needs? Did you seek to love your neighbor? Did you ever consider that your personal faith journey is reflected in four specific events, or roads, documented in the New Testament? Continue reading
I know that the following will seem like a silly bit of prose, but beneath that silliness is something to considered. When do we fail to take responsibility? When does our arrogance and self-righteousness color and detract from our qualities? When does “not my responsibility” blind us to the needs of others? Just thinkin’.
I’m Simply Grand!
Don’t look at me I’m not to blame I didn’t rain out your silly game. I didn’t bring the clouds so grey, and cause the thunder to pound away and dampen down your Saturday! Continue reading
A letter to a cancer survivor from one just diagnosed with lung cancer, June, 2014.
Hope you had a great time camping with the kids. I know they look forward to those trips and time away from the daily routine is important. Especially after all that you have been through.
I wanted to tell you about a recent experience I had. Very early one morning, after I finished my morning readings, I was recalling the words that Dr. Smith had said to me just two days before. He told me I had lung cancer and it was advanced and “hot” and he would need to operate soon! My wife, Joanne, and I were shocked! I immediately thought about the worse that could happen. The doctor detailed what the surgery would mean and the length of recovery. We left that consultation feeling dazed and numb. Continue reading
Recently I re-published an essay about my mother that I had written some two years before. I had as hard time getting started with that essay because of my relationship with her was difficult on occasion, but then resistance faded away and there was my essay, my tribute to my mother.
On the other hand, my relationship with Dad was different. Tucked away are many memories of the two of us. The time he built a sand box in the backyard and those times he would sit there with me playing cars, and roads, etc. We would walk to the nearby hallow, and follow the trail down to the stream below. I was aware that people looked up to him and I know I was proud to be with him. Continue reading
For more than ten years my church has struggled, mostly trying to catch up to and match those halcyon years of the past that we seem to hold out as the “golden age”, a time when everything seemed to be going right. It is hard to realize that those specific years, and those specific elements are not coming back. What we can’t seem to get through our thick skulls is that those wonderful and creative years occurred because of US, the members of my congregation!
It was this same group that willingly served on committees, that participated with energy in “each one reach one” projects, that visited the sick and the homebound, that brainstormed fresh new ideas through Future Ministries, that warmly welcomed the visitor, that were instrumental in the forming of the Lutheran Cursillo movement in the state of Indiana, that aspired to become the mission center for our County, that aspired to be the “heart of town” and we did not view worshiping on Sunday as our only “obligation” as a Christian, each one of us saw a missional purpose throughout the week.
But, we have waited. For however many years it has been. We wait for a pastor who will work magic and lead us. We wait for the inspiration to hit us. We wait for something miraculous to happen. We wait, and the years have gone by and our congregation has simply gotten older. Continue reading
I can hardly wait for the polls to come out! Are we gaining on “them”? Are they gaining on “us”? Last time we gained a whole point, now we are only 17 points behind. Is that a trend? I can hardly wait for the polls to be announced! Silly?
Have you read Ann Herbert’s short essay about “The Snake”? She spins a tale about God creating not one man and one woman, but God creating a whole bunch of humans and putting them in the Garden of Eden. He instructed them to play and have fun. And they did. They ran and frolicked. Climbed trees and rolled down hills. They waded in the streams and played hide and seek in the forests. They had fun until they were exhausted and went to sleep. In the morning the fun started all over again and the humans were happy and carefree. This was Paradise. Continue reading
For those of us who have binged on the speeches and talking heads of the Republican Convention, my sympathies go out to all of us. Maybe it was fatigue, maybe it was a little outrage, maybe it was a carryover from my study of Revelation, but last night, at some point in the final session, waiting for DJT to accept the nomination, I had this fantasy. My apologies in advance should I offend anyone. Continue reading
Many years ago, as a college dean, I sought to comfort an older student who had witnessed the accidental death of her 7 year-old son. As I stood in line at the funeral home, I wondered what could I possibly say to this grieving mother? In front of me was the Campus Pastor who did and said all the right things. The hug, the quite murmurs of sympathy, and then, to my surprise, he began to speak of the young boy and what a blessing he had been in her life. He didn’t avoid the subject. The elephant was in the room but it didn’t matter! Her son was honored by the remembering conversation. The brief conversation did not ally her grief, but it mattered to her. Continue reading
