Christmas 2004. I’m pretty sure it was the last time I made the trek to Deer Bluff. Pictures were the thing this year, and one day Joel wanted to go to Deer Bluff to take some. It was nice to be back there, this place near the family farm that has always captured my imagination.
At one point I was up on top of the bluff and Joel was down below taking pictures of the initials carved in the stone near the small cave. Meandering through the volcanic rock and fallen branches, I tripped over a log and fell with a thud on my stomach and shoulder. I also hit some sort of piece of wood, and cut a couple of plugs out of my fingers.
The fingers were the ugliest, but the shoulder was the greatest concern. Lying there, I wondered if something had been broken. Later, my biggest fear was that I had torn my rotator cuff. Finally, a year later, the MRI showed I had shredded the tendons in my shoulder and yes, I would need surgery.
Awesome. So that’s what a stumbling block is. And I was right in the middle of a stumbling zone. [click to continue…]
Jesus got himself in some pretty interesting predicaments. Seems strange to me – He could walk on water and command the winds and rain, but He never could satisfy a bunch of legalists about why He performed miracles (miracles!) on the Sabbath.
“This can’t be from God. He didn’t keep our rules.”
Sigh… I just wish somehow… oh, never mind.
Anyway, on one occasion, Jesus healed a man who hadn’t walked in 38 years. It took place at the Pool of Bethesda and yes, it was on the Sabbath.
And yes, Jesus had to account for his tawdry behavior. Here’s what He said: [click to continue…]
Strike up the band celebrity endorsements, hang those chads, and God bless the United States of America! It’s that time again! Voters in many parts of the country are already heading to the polls to vote early for the upcoming election, and the turn-off (um, I mean turnout) is high!
What better way to remind you that these are humans, not just 8 x 10 glossies, than with another round of Hanukkah Hams?
Since it’s been a while, let me give you the talking points on what a Hanukkah Ham is. Named in honor of somebody who suggested that his Greenwich Village Jewish customers would love a big ham for their next Hanukkah celebration, a Hanukkah Ham is a really bad (translation: stupid) idea concocted by usually really smart people.
Previous Hanukkah Ham stories have explored the worlds of electricity, money, college life, Christmas, air travel and hunting, to name a few.
But with so many words flying these days, what could invite more people to ask, “Did he just say that?” than political races across the country? Ever since I heard Philip Johns promise to get grits au gratin taken off the lunchroom menu in seventh grade, and Richard Tyson promised to build a student center in ninth, I’ve heard people running for office – any office – say some pretty outlandish things. I guess it just comes with the territory. [click to continue…]
The years so many and memories still real
Point to chances and dances with life-setting choices.
And oh, how my heart could believe in illusions
And stubbornly choke on the mirrors and smoke
Of promises from a deceiver,
Whose only aim was to take and shame –
Never to give or forgive
Or redeem or fulfill a single dream
Like those I found in You,
My One More Chance.
What could I offer to You in return
For the touch of Your grace and the things I have learned?
I will offer the first of my heart to the dance
Of worship to You, My One More Chance.
[click to continue…]
A cathedral in Europe was famous for the large, magnificent, stained‑glass window that was located behind the altar and high above the sanctuary. One day a violent windstorm shattered that beautiful window into a thousand pieces. The church custodian was hesitant to discard the fragments, so he put them in a box and stored them in the basement of the cathedral.
Shortly after the storm, a man who had heard about the damage asked for and received the broken pieces of glass. About 2 years later, he invited the caretaker to visit him in a nearby village. When the custodian arrived, the man explained that he was an artisan and that he had something to show him. When the craftsman unveiled his work, the visitor was astonished to see a lovely window fashioned from the broken fragments. It was even more beautiful than the original.
You can be, too.
Like the shattered window, sometimes we live in the wake of a painful experience that threatens to leave us broken and scarred – an unrecognizable leftover of what we once imagined ourselves to be.
Abundance? Hardly.
Joyful? Are you kidding?
I heard a beautiful reflection on that a couple of years ago from a TV show, of all things: [click to continue…]
Somebody in Florida was pretty up-tight. Back in the day The Florida Baptist Witness ran an article about a book titled, Making Peace With Your Past: Help for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families. The book was written by a pastor, Tim Sledge, who grew up in a dysfunctional family. This pastor realized that events in his childhood still produced a great deal of trauma and difficulty in his present life. The book tells what he learned in his journey toward wholeness and offers a biblical approach for others who deal with the same sort of thing.
One week later, enter one angry letter-writer. How could the Witness even think of highlighting a book that relies on psychology rather than on the Word of God? How could the writer not see that psychology and Christianity are based on two totally different suppositions? The Biblical answer to our past is just to forget it, like God does.
Alrighty then. How’s that working out for you?
Think about it. Is it unscriptural for hurting people to try to get a grip on their past? Is there any such thing as Christian (def. – “under the lordship of Jesus Christ) psychology (def. – “the study of human behavior”)? Is there something spiritually wrong with me, or with you, if we can’t “just forget it, like God does?”
Maybe my Florida friend should take a lesson from the hurricanes that routinely blow through that state. In a matter of hours, those deadly storms can destroy lives, property, and a lot of dreams. No one there escapes the fury.
But then an interesting thing happens. [click to continue…]
If He carried the weight of the world upon His shoulder,
I know my brother that He will carry you.
-Scott Wesley Brown
It was on an old four-propeller Lockheed Constellation airplane, on an 18-hour-long flight from Tokyo to San Francisco. It was the mid-1950s. Carol Willis was just a baby and had a severe earache. To try to comfort her, her dad walked her up and down the aisle of that old plane throughout that long night. If you’ve ever traveled with ear-sensitive children, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Over the years the family nightmare became something of the family joke. Harlan – my father-in-law – would say, “I walked all the way across the Pacific Ocean carrying you in my arms.”
But the family joke also became the family prophecy and the family legacy, and it was a part of Carol’s emotional DNA. Carol spent her growing up years in Thailand, where she and her family traveled across that ocean again to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to a nation they love to this day. [click to continue…]
For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime!
Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning
(Psalm 30:5, NLT)
Until we experience the promise of a home where there is no more night, we all will encounter seasons that feel as though dawn is forever an hour away. It’s not a matter of if , but when the shadows grow long and dark. And no one, regardless of their faith or pedigree, is immune from the seasons when darkness comes.
When darkness comes, “tired” takes on a whole new meaning. Every fiber of your being aches for rest, but rest remains taunting and elusive. Even the simplest of routine tasks feels like labor to exhaustion when darkness comes. [click to continue…]
“Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full” (John 16:24).
They’re called game changers. New players. New rules or rulings. New technologies. New rays of understanding. But sometimes we’re so adjusted, so acclimated to the game changer, it’s easy to lose the significance of it.
In the verse above, Jesus introduces a game changer. In fact, He rewrites the entire playbook for prayer. “Until now,” He says, “you have asked for nothing in My name. Up until now, you have prayed, but you haven’t taken on My identity or authority. You haven’t prayed ‘as if’ it were Me doing the asking”
Now… time to change the game. And that’s what praying in His name produces.
Praying “as if” – that’s what it means to pray in His name. It’s a whole lot more than using a tired old phrase at the end of a prayer. Praying in His name seizes the handle of the greatest cosmic weapon in the universe.
Take a look at any situation. A personal need, a friend in need, whatever… [click to continue…]
On Interstate 40 in New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Santa Rosa, you’ll find an exit at the 226 mile marker.
That’s about it.
A bridge and four exit and entrance lanes. That’s all.
There is no food, phone, gas or camping opportunity. No tourist traps so common on this major cross-country artery. Nothing.
Okay, but at least there’s a highway number or the name of some road, right? I mean, plenty of Interstate exits offer no services, but at least they name the road or the destination like Owassa, Hope Hull, or Tucumcari. What’s the name of this road?
There isn’t one.
Where does it lead?
Nowhere.
The sign simply says, “Exit 226.” [click to continue…]
Christmas 2004. I’m pretty sure it was the last time I made the trek to Deer Bluff. Pictures were the thing this year, and one day Joel wanted to go to Deer Bluff to take some. It was nice to be back there, this place near the family farm that has always captured my imagination.
