This is not a picture of God. It’s a picture of a Nanga Sadhu, or naked Hundu holy man. His face and body are smeared with ashes and he’s breathing out marijuana, not brimstone.
But look again.
I think in a lot of people’s minds, when they think of God, an image sort of like this emerges.
Angry.
Ashen.
Fire-breathing.
Other people imagine the opposite extreme [click to continue…]
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It was that time again. Time to plan the annual Men’s Rafting Trip in Colorado. I had taken a group of fifty men a year earlier and discovered how some guys get the nickname “Bob” when they go rafting.
That’s all I want to say about that.
Now as I pulled out the file, I came across the list of men who had gone with me. What a difference 12 months had made! I was amazed at the profound changes so many of them had witnessed.
Put in Biblical language, “their brooks had dried up.” That is, they looked to a means by which God had provided for them in the past – health, strength, job, career – only to discover that the resource was no longer available.
Little did I know as I scanned that list that I, too, would soon face a drought of my own. Up until that time my ministry was fairly evenly split between an itinerant ministry and a part-time pastoral staff position. Within a matter of weeks, my traveling ministry had dwindled to two continuous months of inactivity. Then the church where I had served for four years terminated me, along with a number of other staff members, because of budgetary restraints.
Downsized! [click to continue…]
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It was a momentous day, and I thought I knew why. Boy, did I have another thing coming.
It happened on an early morning in late August 1976. I was about to enter a new phase in my life called “college.” And today was registration day.
Preparations for this day had begun several years earlier. I was blessed to have one of those life-changer teachers in high school who saw it as her mission, partly, to give us a taste of what university life would be like. And I have to say, thanks to her, to whatever degree I may have dissed schoolwork in high school, I had my game face on now.
This was college. This was serious.
Advisors and friends had also prepared me for what to expect when freshmen show up at registration.
“You want what class? Nice try. That class closed when the sophomores came through here yesterday.”
Nevertheless, I had made out a schedule, and thought it was a good fit for me. I was excited. But I also wanted to be teachable and flexible.
Oh yeah, and godly.
So before I left for the campus, I knelt beside my bed and laid out my pre-designed schedule in front of me. And I began to pray. My prayer went something like this: [click to continue…]
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I hated Ann Finch.
Three times she sent me to the principal’s office, and two of those times I emerged with a butt-on-fire.
One time she made me stay after school in an Ann-imposed detention. I lied to my mother and told her I needed to stay late because of band. When she picked me up, who should be walking out of the building but Miss Finch? She tattled on me, and then it was double trouble.
Once I ended the grading period with an 89.4 average. She gave me a “B” for the quarter. One lousy stinking tenth of a point! Too bad. She wouldn’t budge.
I liked Ann Finch.
Probably for the wrong reasons, but I liked her nonetheless. She was so easy to pick on. [click to continue…]
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“I can’t hear in that ear.”
As long as I knew her, Mama was deaf in her right ear. Because of that she was always sensitive to multi-sensory sound. “I can’t stand all this noise,” she would say as the TV, piano, stereo, and/or people talking (I usually had some role in most of that) all converged at one place. Most often, though, I encountered that deafness when I wanted to whisper something SECRET in her ear as a child.
I can still hear in both ears, but I don’t know that I’ve ever been more aware of a cacophony of sound as I am today.
I guess I may have slept a total of two hours. There were the calls. The updated information. The relaying of information to my adult kids, and back. The processing. The adrenaline rush of a life-in-crisis that demands action. Now! Sleep, miles, and other needs be damned.
This morning I’m feeling general anger at every phone call, interruption, or other delay. It’s never convenient when the phone rings. But today, it feels downright rude. Unless I’m the one calling, of course.
My sister calls while I’m in the security line. She tells me the neurosurgeon has come in and said there is nothing they can do. “He said if they take her off the respirator, she could last until you get here this afternoon…”
“No, don’t wait,” I say. [click to continue…]
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From our Fifth Anniversary Celebration
Walk inside my office and look to the left, just under the big window. There you will find one of my most cherished possessions. It’s an original framed caricature of a lion inside a cardboard box. It was given to me for Christmas 2003 by two dear friends. And it’s the kind of thing that when you see it, you know there’s a story behind it. And if you’re in my office for the first time, as a couple was yesterday, it’s only natural that you would ask about it.
So I thought I’d tell you the story behind it. This is the story of the Lion Dream. [click to continue…]
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It was one of those unseen transactions, and I had the privilege of being the only seer. Even though this was a very public place, sometimes the public places are, well, too public. People are taking care of bid-ness, and moving about in their transes; I was no exception.
Until she walked by.
She was about 6 years old and it was about 6:00 p.m. [click to continue…]
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You up for a little side trip? This one rolls down Memory Lane in a church bus with papered-up windows, wide-eyed teenagers, and me in handcuffs in the back of a police car. This is the (true) story of what happens when non-planning randomizers like me actually take the time to plan something. This is the story of The Underground Project.
Once upon a time (hey, I said it was a story), I was a youth pastor in Lumberton, Mississippi. I was fairly new, and school had just let out for summer. For the folks at First Baptist Church, that meant one thing: Vacation Bible School. And I was expected to have something each night for the youth group. So I planned to do something unique and special each evening. Can’t remember which night it was for sure – I think it was Tuesday. But on the promotional information, I said very little. I just said come later – at 8:30 – for The Underground Project.
Use your imagination. Be an energetic teenager in a small, south Mississippi town in the early summer. You arrive at the church to see a painted sign attached to the chain link fence that says, Closed by Order of the State. (What’s funny about that is that the old church building actually had a bad flood/mold problem and had been ordered closed within a year or so.)
Ex-pec-tant and excited, you enter the fellowship hall, where you are asked to have a seat and wait for instructions. Then in groups of 6 or 7, you are invited into a room. There I explain that I have some important information for you. [click to continue…]
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(A Turning Point Story)
“So I guess you’ll write something about this in your article,” my dad said.
“Probably,” was my reply. Probably, indeed. I don’t know what you do with your fish stories, but mine wound up in the freezer. And somewhere in heaven, Jonah must have been smiling.
Long ago now – about 15 years – I took the kids fishing. This trip was a lot more fun previous ones because they were able to bait their own hooks. All totaled, they caught 18 fish, and loved every minute of it. I just caught one. But I had no complaints.
“Asking to be caught.” That was my interpretation of what Daddy called “guarding his nest.” I called him Big Boy, and for good reason. He was the biggest bass I had ever seen in all my years fishing the family pond. And what was most amazing was that I actually saw him! Hovering in the water there, about three feet from the dam, he just stayed in one position.
Silently, breathlessly, I flirted with Big Boy for an hour. [click to continue…]
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Seven or eight years ago, I was taking a shuttle from the Founders Inn Hotel on the edge of Regent University down to the shoreline in Virginia Beach. It was just the driver and me, and to make conversation, I asked him, “Do you know where London Bridge Baptist Church is?”
“Sure,” he said. It’s not far from here. You know somebody there?
“No. But I went there on my very first mission trip.”
“Why would anybody,” he wanted to know, “come to Virginia Beach on a mission trip?”
That night I didn’t know how to answer him – this man who lives in the shadow of Pat Robertson and CBN, Rock Church, and a host of other citadels of Evangelicalism. Today I think I do. It was the Perfect Form.
“Mission ‘73” it was called. I caught a glimpse of an announcement in our church bulletin. A youth choir mission trip to Virginia Beach, VA, for students who had completed the ninth grade or older. Hey, I loved to travel and barely made the age cutoff, so I was sold! I was still a spiritual newbie, and didn’t really know very many people. But I was undeterred.
Mark Stone, the pastor of London Bridge at the time, was an old friend of my pastor. We would go to this crossroads of vacationers, military personnel, and growing suburbanites and conduct Backyard Bible Clubs, help lead out in a church revival, and witness along the Boardwalk and beach along the Atlantic.
I was among the youngest – and spiritually greenest –of the 64 or so to go on this adventure. I was surrounded by people who were older, more established, and way more sure of themselves. I certainly can’t remember them all, but the list included: [click to continue…]
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