Unsophisticated, earthy, almost guttural – rags are blue-collar, made-for-dirt, hidden-from-company kind of stuff.
We all have them, but some people go to considerable lengths to deny it.
“It’s not a wash rag, dear. It’s a wash cloth.”
“Oh. Yew not from around heah, are ya’?”
That t-shirt or those shorts you’re wearing? Rags in the making.
I grew up with wash rags, shop rags, shoeshine rags, snot rags (my dad’s term), and dust rags. “Dust cloths” were the property of Yankees and people from other parts of town. [click to continue…]
I’ve been noticing something in me that I don’t like. It’s been around ever since somebody first said “no” to me and I ignored her or him. But lately it’s been strutting around with a vengeance, so I thought I’d expose the big puke for the world to see. So take that, flesh.
I first noticed it in particular when I started reading Watchman Nee’s classic, The Spiritual Man. While I read some really good stuff, I find my mind racing with a torrent of thoughts. Crazy thoughts. Rebellious thoughts. Ugly, fleshly thoughts.
I find it raging sometimes in church when I’m supposed to be the spiritual leader pointing toward Christ and instead I feel this compelling urge to point to me.
I notice it, strangely enough, when I’m with the people I love the most and I’m feeling a flood of emotions that are anything but loving. [click to continue…]
Time Magazine, in it’s provocative “Ten Ideas Changing the World Right Now,” reports that having a job is cool again. Rather than regarding employment as a necessary evil to be escaped as soon as possible, jobs are now considered an asset. (Nothing like losing something to recognize its worth, I guess).
Someone just told me about his father, who for eight years tried to make a go of his home-based business and now, in his 60s, realizes the need for an employer. He’s finding it difficult.
My favorite job/career-hunting book, What Color is Your Parachute?, which has been updated annually since 1970, was back on the best-seller list in December.
So with the new demand for paying day-jobs and the shortening supply, I thought it might be helpful offer some strategies for improving your chances. [click to continue…]
I had an experience a few years ago that moved me more than anything had in months or years. And to this day, I’m still not sure why, and/or why it moved me on that particular day.
It was a Sunday afternoon. The house was quiet and I was alone. I lay down on the bed and started watching a rerun of “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” I’d seen the movie several years earlier, and for whatever reason, decided to watch it again.
I had already gotten pretty weepy at a couple of places in the movie. But at the climax of the film, when Mr. Holland sees the lives he has impacted, and hears the governor, once his student, say, “Mr. Holland, we are your opus,” my guts turned inside out. It hit a nerve – a deep, raw nerve – like nothing had in years – perhaps ever.
By this time I was sitting in the den, alone in the house, sobbing. [click to continue…]
Here’s a new definition of boring: working at a dry cleaners at 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon. In a town like ours, where the cleaners on virtually every corner close at noon or 1:00 on Saturdays, and nothing is actually being cleaned, it can be a pretty sleepy time.
Until I show up.
The wedding was scheduled for 5:00, and everything was ready. The church was decorated, the ceremony was prepared and printed, and the wedding party was starting to party (translation: flashbulbs were popping). All I needed to do was go home, freshen up a bit, and change into my suit.
In what part of me remains traditional, I keep a black suit. It goes with anything, is appropriate for funerals or weddings or any other semi-formal something. Problem is, I only wear the thing when there is a semi-formal something.
Real people, real stories, real living Christ! If you’re in the South Plains (Texas) area, please help us get the word out… no matter what you’re facing, a Risen Lord changes everything. Join us at Turning Point for our Easter 2009 celebration on April 11-12. Saturday service: 5:00 pm. Sunday Services: 9:00 and 10:30 am.
Click here to go to the web site for directions and more information.
If you live elsewhere, please pray for us, and let me know in the comments section below how we can pray for you this Easter season.
Five days of creation. Five days to speak a universe and earth into being. But for the first five days, as God created the stars and planets, the sea and land, and its teeming life, there was no one to speak back.
True, the angels brought Him praise, and creation tacitly spoke of his glory. But a voice was missing. A voice of intimacy, of image reflected. A voice of will – of determined love. A voice of faith and surrendered strength.
Day six. The climax of it all came when God breathed into the man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.
Imagine the Father’s delight as He introduced Adam to a universe of discovery. To show him the bumblebee or the giraffe, the caterpillar or the butterfly, the lion and the lamb. To see the childlike wonder in the grown man’s eyes as he witnessed this living Artist’s canvas for the first time. [click to continue…]
I have a confession to make. I can’t pass a mirror without looking at it. Call me weird, call me vain, just don’t call me when a mirror is close by. I probably won’t hear you.
Sometimes I primp. Sometimes I frown. Sometimes I actually impress myself and sometimes I just sigh. But whatever the reaction, it won’t cure me of wanting to take another look next time.
I have a hunch that I’m not alone. A lot of people spend a lot of time looking at themselves in the looking glass. Mirrors are an important part of our culture. Some people cover their walls at home with them. Michael Jackson once recorded a song about it. And where would we be without that fairy-tale question, “Mirror, Mirror on the wall…?”
I don’t know geology, but I know generally what they’re talking about when they use the word, “fault.” Somewhere deep in the foundations of the earth are places where cracks produce shifts at times in the earth’s foundation. We experience them as earthquakes. Destructive and deadly, they leave scars on lives and landscapes that time alone doesn’t fix. All the result of faults that, may have seemed nonexistent a day earlier.
Faults show up in the Bible, too. “Admit your faults to one another and pray for each other,” James says, “so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous man has great power and wonderful results” (James 5:16, LB). First thing I notice is that even “righteous men” have faults. And who better to pray for our faults than someone who is painfully aware of their own?
Of course, we have other names for faults… character flaws, weaknesses, besetting sins, vices. [click to continue…]
Rag. Now there’s an every-day word.
“Something’s wrong with your work.” The conversation eventually landed there.
I’ve been noticing something in me that I don’t like. It’s been around ever since somebody first said “no” to me and I ignored her or him. But lately it’s been strutting around with a vengeance, so I thought I’d expose the big puke for the world to see. So take that, flesh.
Some of the rules have changed.
I had an experience a few years ago that moved me more than anything had in months or years. And to this day, I’m still not sure why, and/or why it moved me on that particular day.
Here’s a new definition of boring: working at a dry cleaners at 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon. In a town like ours, where the cleaners on virtually every corner close at noon or 1:00 on Saturdays, and nothing is actually being cleaned, it can be a pretty sleepy time.
Five days of creation. Five days to speak a universe and earth into being. But for the first five days, as God created the stars and planets, the sea and land, and its teeming life, there was no one to speak back.
I have a confession to make. I can’t pass a mirror without looking at it. Call me weird, call me vain, just don’t call me when a mirror is close by. I probably won’t hear you.
I don’t know geology, but I know generally what they’re talking about when they use the word, “fault.” Somewhere deep in the foundations of the earth are places where cracks produce shifts at times in the earth’s foundation. We experience them as earthquakes. Destructive and deadly, they leave scars on lives and landscapes that time alone doesn’t fix. All the result of faults that, may have seemed nonexistent a day earlier.