Tomorrow. The word alone is enough to give pause, for wrapped in its syllables are promise and hope. There is the grace of time, too, which we will surely need now and then. I like the fact, Lord, that we get to start over and make a new one each day.
Brokenness, a Prayer for Lent
March 31, 2020 by Leave a Comment
God, it takes courage to be the creatures
you made us to be.
Year after year we add to our experiences of the world,
pushing against our limits
to find out what will budge and what will not.
Mystery, a Prayer for Lent
March 17, 2020 by Leave a Comment
God, thank you for faithful signs
of spring that tell us you love the world.
Give us glimpses of your creation
that are sights for sore eyes…
The Worship Hour: The Second Sunday of Lent
March 3, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Giver of all good gifts, we thank you again for the bounty you have allowed us in this privileged land, and for the privilege of distributing your gifts to others—that they also may be blessed!
The Theology of Extremity
February 25, 2020 by 1 Comment
What matters most to God? In recent years that question has grown larger and deeper at the center of my soul. My struggle to discern what really matters most to God has settled around a rather unsettling phrase: “the theology of extremity.”
Overcoming Ethnocentrism
February 12, 2020 by Leave a Comment
A major barrier that impedes growth in multicultural, multiracial churches is known as “ethnocentrism,” the tendency to view the norms and values of one’s own culture as absolute and to use them as a standard against which to judge and measure all other cultures. Many times this tendency is cloaked under the attitude that “they don’t do it like us.”
Bringing Our Pain to God
February 11, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Think about the people you know who are in terrible pain right now. Violence, death, loss, trauma, or physical or mental illness has touched them, even destroyed them. If they should come to worship, is there an appropriate context for them to acknowledge their pain before God?
Six Ways to Embrace Your Uniqueness
January 22, 2020 by Leave a Comment
As we put our hands to the plow of the new year, consider these six ways of transforming yourself and your Sunday school class.
Bells: A Meditation for Teachers
January 21, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Telephone bells, doorbells, school bells, and fire alarms all alert us and prepare us to go into action. Our modern use of bells is totally different than one hundred years ago. Church bells rang the hour of the day and told of a death.
Unless You Come unto Me as These
January 14, 2020 by Leave a Comment
This one is going to be a problem for us. You know that most adults have forgotten that they were children once upon a time. In fact, how long has it been since most adults have included “once upon a time” in any sentence?
Catching a Glimpse
December 31, 2019 by
The first Christmas comes and goes, and most people don’t notice. Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and a few others catch a glimpse of what is happening, but they’re just a handful.
Helping Each Other Grieve
December 25, 2019 by
As well as being a joyous time, Christmas can be difficult for people touched by tragedy or loss in the past year. Grief is isolating. While the rest of the world seems to be celebrating, tragedies years and decades old resurface.
The Spiritual Significance of Star Wars
December 17, 2019 by
The same excitement that makes Star Wars a great entry point to the rudiments of physics, for example, also makes it a great resource for spiritual reflection and discussion.
God Is Greater than Our Hearts
December 10, 2019 by
I once owned a car with a broken gas gauge. When the tank was empty, the needle pointed to “E.” When the tank was half full, the gauge still read empty. When the gas tank was filled to overflowing, the needle budged just a little, moving slightly to the right of the empty mark.
Coming, a Prayer for Advent
December 3, 2019 by
Come to us, Lord Jesus,
in every purple-patterned life,
every wrap of loving arms
in shivering December.
Thanksgiving Supper
November 27, 2019 by
At 10:30 on Thanksgiving Day, I am standing in a long line waiting for a box of Thanksgiving. We are not in a restaurant, as you might expect, but in a nondescript building—a VFW hall, Rotary Club hall, or Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall.
Meditations on Mark: Prepare the Way
November 20, 2019 by
This is the promise John the Baptist makes in the opening chapter of Mark’s Gospel. Mark doesn’t begin with the story of Jesus’ birth. Rather, he jumps into the middle of the story with Jesus already as an adult, ready to begin his ministry. This is the urgency in Mark: The Messiah has come.
Faith Postures: Noticing When We Obstruct Christ
October 29, 2019 by
I did something one weekend of which I am ashamed. I did something I can never take back and something for which I can never be sure of the ramifications.
Self-fulfilling Prophesies
October 22, 2019 by
When we were young children, our parents would tell us that we were smart, hesitant, too thin-skinned, impatient, or cute. We often accepted the labels our relatives gave us before we had a chance to understand the significance of our attributes.
With All Your Heart
October 9, 2019 by
Good counselors ask good questions. The counselor who helped me work through my season of depression once asked me a question that revealed a source of my pain and a path I needed to take toward healing. She asked, “Who knows your whole story?”
Wrinkles
September 25, 2019 by
Most of us can remember the exact moment when we looked in the mirror and saw our first gray hair or the first noticeable wrinkle on our face. We were still young, perhaps only in our twenties.
A Worship Hour Outline: Dreams
September 18, 2019 by
We come to dream with you, Spirit of Hope. We confess that some of our dreams have been selfish ambitions, and that we have often been driven by personal gain and little interest in others or your will.
Thou Shalt Remember Thou Art Creative
July 30, 2019 by
The question I get more than any other—more than “What’s the meaning of life?”, or “Why do people suffer?”, or “Why are the New England Patriots so . . . them?”—is “Can I learn to be funny?”
Live the Stories: Noah’s Ark
July 23, 2019 by
Remind the children of how Adam and Eve made a mistake in last week’s story. That mistake caused the world to be an unhappy place where people didn’t treat God or each other the right way. Begin by asking the children if they know what an ark is. They may respond by stating that an ark is a boat or something that Noah built.
Strangers: A Meditation for Teachers
July 17, 2019 by
They walk, run, tumble, and drag into your room on the first day of school—complete strangers. At the beginning of the year they all seem to look alike.
Justice, Kindness, Humility
June 25, 2019 by
One morning in my eighth grade social studies class, the teacher said, “The world is one-third Christian, twenty percent Muslim, and thirteen percent Hindu.” We thought that was the goofiest thing we had ever heard. Where I grew up in Mississippi, there were four religions—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and heathen.
The Struggle to Cope with Time
June 4, 2019 by
The prayer, “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart,” serves as the turning point in the larger prayer of Psalm 90. The human experience of time is a major theme of the psalm as a whole.
Of Course, You’ll Have the Good Taste Not to Mention that I Spoke to You
May 22, 2019 by
You may have already recognized that the sermon title is taken from one of the greatest, most socially relevant, and downright funniest movies ever made: Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles.
Souvenirs: A Meditation for Teachers
May 8, 2019 by
We collect souvenirs so that we will not forget special people and places. Sometimes the memories that return when we see or touch a momento are more wondrous and inspiring than the actual experience. Often our favorite souvenirs are the simplest ones: a Christmas tree ornament, a shell, or a postcard.
Who Blesses Whom
April 24, 2019 by
Isaac was a unique, funny, lovable guy, albeit frustrating at times. He had a way of wiggling his endearing, stubborn soul into your heart like I imagine a little brother would. He was a man of few words, but he could always communicate what he wanted in any given moment.
Death and Life
April 3, 2019 by
We lose so many good people. When Jesus finally arrives at his friends’ home, Lazarus has been dead for four days.
¿Qué Quieres?
February 26, 2019 by
¿Qué quieres, Lorena? ¿Qué quieres? I repeated it to myself as I stared at my reflection in the window of an almost thousand-year-old church. What do you want?
Soul: Fire in Preaching
February 20, 2019 by
In my experience, eighty percent of the fuel for preaching comes from sources outside the study. I do not mean scouring the countryside or the urbanside for sermon illustrations.
Faith Postures: Noticing Our (God-repaired) Selves
February 6, 2019 by
Sometimes I mistakenly read the Bible like a Jane Austen book. Life seems so simple in Pride and Prejudice or in Sense and Sensibility; the good people are good, the bad people are bad, and everyone knows who is who.
A Bit of Hell
January 22, 2019 by
“I’m a fake,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean that I get up and I teach my Sunday school class when I don’t even know if I believe what I’m teaching anymore.”
Guilt: A Meditation for Teachers
January 9, 2019 by
One unfortunate thing we often learn as small children is how to fling guilt at other people. We find that guilt is a sticky substance that seems to attach better to some than to others.
Cancer Is Not Evil
January 8, 2019 by
The most significant source of strength I draw from as I deal with cancer is not some coping mechanism that comes naturally to me. I don’t have three keys for stress-free living to offer my readers. Instead, the most important, most helpful sources of inspiration and strength for me have been my beliefs about God.
Seeking, a Prayer for Epiphany
January 1, 2019 by
God of all times and places, we move into this new year as travelers seeking the shelter of your presence in all our comings and goings. Like the magi we move from familiar surroundings, crossing borders to enter unknown times and places.
In Community
October 16, 2018 by
We are in all kinds of communities, and we should be grateful for each of them. There are of course the neighborhood we live in, the one we work in, our city or town. Our churches are communities of faith but also communities of friendship.
Spiritual but Not Religious
August 29, 2018 by
Many would say, to use a modern phrase, that Lincoln was “spiritual but not religious.” Such a posture should be celebrated as an expression of heartfelt belief and longing, but it should also be considered with a word of caution.
When We Have to Choose: The Indecisiveness Roadblock
August 22, 2018 by
God’s word is packed with informative insights for Christians who want to move around the roadblock of indecisiveness. In addition, many characters introduced to us in Scripture flesh out these insights in their lives.
Choose Discipline, Not Disease
August 7, 2018 by
The people of Judah were in the grips of a great enemy. King Nebuchadnezzar and the armies of Babylon had conquered their land, taken away the sacred items from their temple, and carried many of the people far from home. The people needed wise political and religious leadership to know how to live in such difficult times.
Getting It All Together
July 31, 2018 by
Jesus’ boat lands on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee—no longer in Jewish territory. This is like landing in Cuba. Along the edge of the lake, tombs are cut into the mountain. The village graveyard is this land’s version of a mental institution.
Jesus’ Use of the Psalms
July 24, 2018 by
For ordinary Christians who experience opposition and negative feelings, we are invited to bring the full breadth of these experiences into the realm of God.
Loyal Dissenters: Reading Matthew 22:21 Together
July 3, 2018 by
When English Baptists in the seventeenth century read Matthew 22:21, they heard Jesus establishing a limit on the authority of civil power. Caesar did have legitimate concerns in this world—collecting taxes, for example—and, in those areas, he could exercise his power as he saw fit.
Evangelical Common Worship on National Holidays
June 27, 2018 by
In general, we come to common worship from a week in which a secular society has tried to shape our identity as something radically different than what Scripture says it is.
Responding to the Apollo 13 Miracle
June 26, 2018 by
We hear a lot about miracles today, and there is a large volume of work addressing the subject—more than I could address in this book. In my experience on the Lunar Module team during Apollo 13, I felt moved in a special way by what I felt was answered prayer and the miraculous recovery of the crew.
Pain Can Give Birth to New Life
May 8, 2018 by
The day my first grandchild, Liam, was born, Linda and I arrived at the hospital and went to my daughter Elizabeth’s room to spend time with her and her husband, Josh. Every two or three minutes, Elizabeth would have a contraction, a passing moment of tension and discomfort.