For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer (Psalm 32:4).
Everybody talks about the fever heat of summer.
But nobody talks about the heavy hand of God anymore. [click to continue…]
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Commit your life to Christ. Study your Bible. Confess your sins and shortcomings. Grow. Change. Restore broken fellowship with God. Obey the Lord. Learn spiritual truth.
Think. Learn. Set goals. Visualize the future. Understand people. Pass tests. Listen. Focus on virtuous things.
Be happy. Feel guilty. Grieve. Laugh. Relax. Overcome depression. Stop being jealous. Express love. Calm down. Be content.
Get up after falling down. Get over failure. Get out of bondage. Overcome addictions. Decide. Change your mind. Quit. Succeed. Make good choices. Make bad choices. Change your mind about the bad choices you made in the past.
Lose weight. Eat right. Rest. Exercise. Take your medicine. Go to the doctor. Prevent unnecessary disease. Be healed. Take a bath. [click to continue…]
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A Fable about leadership, teamwork, unity, and of course, honey…
It was a lovely morning in the Hundred Acre Wood, where Christopher Robin’s friends lived and played. The bees were abuzz making their honey (and You-Know-Who knew just who it was for).
Kanga had already gotten an early start on motherly things, while Roo was playing close by.
Piglet was pacing about his tidy home saying “Oh Dear, Dear, Dear” because he knew something Important was about to happen, but he couldn’t quite remember what it was.
Rabbit was tending his garden, nervously glancing around for signs that he soon may be bounced by Tigger.
Eeyore was a bit confused as he chomped on a thistle because he couldn’t think of anything to be gloomy about.
Owl was remembering the time to no one in particular that his great uncle Waldo on his mother’s side did something famous because it happened on a lovely day such as today.
And Winnie the Pooh? Being a Bear of Very Little Brain, he was sitting at the Thotful Spot, thinking. And wishing for just a bit of honey, because as everyone knows, bears think better when their tumblies aren’t so rumbly. And there’s nothing like honey to take the rumbly out of the tumbly.
This was no ordinary day after all. This was the day of the Grand Celebration. They weren’t quite sure what they were celebrating, but everyone had agreed that today would be a fine day to celebrate it. [click to continue…]
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“What would be s good time to come by your office?”
The voice on the other end of the phone was none other than Eugene Davis, Sophomore Christian and resident expert on all things spiritually enormous.
Normally Eugene would pop in, sort of like the Allies dropped by to pay the Germans a visit at Normandy. But this was different. It had the air of urgency. Eugene Davis was always serious and everything was important. But this was a step beyond. It was deliberate. Ruggedly precise. Appointment-worthy.
“I’m free about 3:00,” I said. ”What’s up?” (To this day I don’t like ambushes in meetings.)
“I think the Lord has given me a vision.”
“Well,” said I, ”I’ll be here. Come on by.”
Apparently I didn’t send the right signal. Didn’t catch the gravy of the situation. This was a vision. From God! [click to continue…]
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This may be a leap, but let’s assume for a minute that you know what it is you want, and you’re pursuing it. I don’t mean what you’re conquering in your search for lunch. I’m talking destiny, journey-of-desire stuff. Maybe it’s to influence or gain the approval of someone. Maybe it’s wisdom to make good choices or the ability to do something that’s hard or impossible for you right now.
Regardless, have you ever noticed that sometimes getting there feels like an eight-lane highway? And other times, the minute you start moving in that direction it feels like you just turned onto a muddy jungle trail?
Have you ever noticed that sometimes the journey launches like gangbusters, but then stalls or stagnates?
Chances are, you came to a fork in the road and made a wrong turn.
Robert Frost was right in his famous poem about the two roads and choosing the one less traveled by. What he failed to mention was that life or any worthwhile pursuit is a series of forks in the road, not just one. One road leads to a path that makes it easier to pursue your dreams; the other leads to mediocrity, failure, and defeat.
Paths that lead to mediocrity and failure are well-worn and popular. They require the least mental effort or “soul work.” But what starts off as the path of least resistance quickly turns to the path of resistance-beats-my-brains-out.
Other paths may appear to require a lot of work or may leave you feeling isolated and alone. But somewhere in that spiritual, emotional, and mental work you activate forces that begin to carry your load, increase your speed, and move you in the direction of your truest desires.
The other tricky part about these forks in the road: [click to continue…]
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It’s the creator’s fantasy…
…to use the tools of the trade – words or paint or dance or music – to design the ultimate masterpiece.
…to turn passion into such artistic cleverness and inspiration into such adoration that mountains move, easels grow dark, and all other voices remain silent, at least for a while.
…to write the song to end all songwriting, or the story that all other stories are compared to, or the verse that contains the finest content of the heart.
Never gonna happen.
The heart is too large to be reduced to words or rhymes or phrases or meter.
The soul is too powerfully changing to be framed by one snapshot of expression.
The imagination is too delighted in the dance of dreaming to stop with one image.
The inspiration is too elusive and awe-inspiring to ever satisfy the poet that his work is done.
The Creator whose image we bear is too interesting to be limited to our vision-of-the-moment.
So we have the choice… [click to continue…]
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You wouldn’t have known from meeting Martha the first time that her life had been a sinking ship. Rewind from the near-poverty this single mother of two sons lived to the day she walked away from her “covering” – an abusive, controlling religious system. Go back a bit further to the time her minister husband left her for another woman. If you dare, rewind a bit more to the night she and her husband came home to find their third son, Matthew, dead in his crib from SIDS.
Life had not been kind. But you wouldn’t know it from the courageous smile, the ox-like willingness to work, and the radiant joy she had in her relationship with Jesus Christ. Sure, Martha had her moments, and could cry with the worst of ‘em. But a heart so captured by the grace of God will cling to it, even when everything else seems lost.
I once asked her why she didn’t just walk away, since loving and serving God had been so costly. I don’t remember any words – just the look on her face that let me know I had just asked the most absurd question possible.
A heart once captured will never let go. [click to continue…]
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I believe that it is not dying that people are afraid of. Something else, something more unsettling and more tragic than dying frightens us. We are afraid of never having lived, of coming to the end of our days with the sense that we were never really alive, that we never figured out what life was for. – Harold Kushner
The great Presbyterian pastor Donald Grey Barnhouse was once riding in a funeral procession in Philadelphia when he noticed a large cargo truck running in front of the procession. From the way the sun was positioned, he noticed that the truck was casting a large shadow on the sidewalk. That shadow crossed light poles, road signs, and even people, and didn’t harm anything. No one would want to be in front of the truck, mind you, but the shadow was harmless.
Every one of us was born on the other side of something called “labor.” We enter the world completely helpless and fragile, totally dependent on the protection, care and kindness of others. We borrow the oxygen and assorted things for a span of time the Bible calls a “vapor.” Despite our claims to ownership, we take no possessions with us. And we end our sojourn on earth passing through something called a “shadow.”
Birth is a labor soon forgotten…
Life is a vapor quickly fading…
Possessions are an illusion suddenly passing…
Death is shadow silently creeping…
Is there any wonder we struggle sometimes to know what’s real? And what’s valuable? [click to continue…]
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Does your team have what it takes to go the distance?
Something happens when people get together to forge a team. Unfortunately, that “something” isn’t always what you’re looking for. See if you recognize any of these teams from your experience:
Team Fritter. Talk about potential. It seems as though whenever they’re on the ropes, somehow the miraculous happens and they live to see another day. On the other hand, every time it seems they have the chance for that big breakthrough they flounder. Never fully realizing their potential, they choke every time they get ahead.
Team Glitter. This bunch has success written all over it. Smart, good-looking, and well-liked, things came fast and easy for Team Glitter. Too fast. And too easy. Before you know it, what appears to shimmer is anything but gold. And the team comes caving in under the load of its own scandal(s), greed, and dishonesty.
Team Bitter. Another story of lost potential, this team doesn’t have an integrity problem. It has an anger problem. A big anger problem. Sucked in by jealousy and dispirited by feelings of rejection or failure, this team sabotages its own enormous potential by holding onto the bitterness, anger, or mistrust. [click to continue…]
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Frankford and 82nd. Sitting at the light. Laura Kate (age almost-3) and I have been on an adventure. And she is about to ask me a very important question. But first, a slight rewind…
“Laura Kate, first we’ll go to the grocery store. Then we’ll go by Grammy’s office and pick up some prizes she has for you.”
“That’s an awesome plan,” she says.
In between, she learns six (count ‘em) verses of an Easter song her uncle Joel and I wrote when he wasn’t much older than she is now. Which brings us to the traffic light near our house on the way home.
“Papa,” says the voice in the back seat. “Are you growed up?”
“What did you say?” I reply. “Am I growed up?”
“Yes,” she says, very seriously.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “I’m growed up.”
“Yay, Papa! You did it!”
I wish it was that easy to claim maturity. Sometimes I think I’m still a kid when it comes to such things. And sometimes I feel, well, old. But there’s a difference between growing up and growing old. Peter Pan and his Lost Boys were only half right.
It’s OK to be a baby when you’re still a baby. But there comes a time when the word of God and the world of people come together to shout, “Grow up!” After addressing the Corinthians as a pack of carnal children, Paul writes to the Ephesians that “we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).
How do you measure your maturity? How do you know when you’re growing and when you’re floundering? Let me hasten to say that maturity isn’t found in big words or fat bank accounts, or your ability to make babies or get a job (although keeping a job may impress a few people).
In gauging your maturity level, I have found five things that act as measuring rods for progress. You are as mature as: [click to continue…]
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