(An occasional blog from Pastor Larry LaPierre. Larry passed away Dec 21st, 2023. We remember him fondly & cherish his wisdom & writings.)
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5 October 2022 PDF Version
Giving Up On God
For thousands of years, people have prayed for God to do something. The reasons are many, and the response to our prayers have sometimes been exactly what we hoped for. At other times, the response to our prayers has caused us to wonder whether God was listening. Some people, even people of faith, have given up on God.
Why is that? Why do we give up on God? There may be a simple explanation, at least on a psychological level, to explain what, to many people, is unexplainable. However, I have not found it. What I have found are a number of what I describe as “Obstacles to a Life of Grace.”
That was the title of a talk that I used to give when I was a spiritual director on a 3-day weekend known by various names (Cursillo, Tres Dias, Walk to Emmaus, Kairos). That 30–60 minute talk included considering the place of prayer in our lives as people who wanted to become more thoughtful, loving, and effective disciples of Jesus. So, how does prayer work? Better yet, why doesn’t prayer “work?”
A large part of the problem is that we don’t all agree on what prayer is. Untold numbers of books have been written that attempted to answer that question. For some of us, prayer is an intensely personal experience of quietly listening for God’s Spirit to speak to us. For others, it is a highly verbal time of telling God all that we want God to know. That includes what we want God to do about what is not to our liking about the world. Then, there are people who expect that God knows everything that we need and provides for our needs. There is good biblical support for that view. Others believe that the prayer of a pastor, priest or a pastoral counselor is somehow more effective than the prayers of people who are not ordained. 
One of my friends said I told him that “Prayer is just talking to God.” I was not able to come up with a brief explanation of why I thought that was not how I would explain my experience of prayer now. There is always more to say about God and prayer. What I want to emphasize here is that the focus of prayer at any moment in time can be about anything in us or in the lives of anyone, as well as anything else that we are concerned about. However, the focus ideally begins with God and stays on God’s love.
We need to do our best to pray as people who are seeking “to know, to love and to serve God.” In other words, in the ideal world, prayer is an expression of what we feel, think and discover in our search for God and the choices we have to make to draw closer to God.
We also need to know that God does not ignore the prayers or cries for help of any sort just because we don’t know how to pray like someone else does. That reality was settled once and for all when I read a book by the author, Ann Lamott, who writes about addiction and spiritual life. The book that I am referring to was entitled, “Help! Thanks! Wow!” At first, I thought that she was oversimplifying the nature of prayer by focusing on prayer in times of need (“Help!”), in times when we are grateful (“Thanks!”) and in times of wonder, joy or excitement (“Wow!”).
However, her book brought me back to the basics of prayer. They include these four factors:
1) There is a God
2) God loves us.
3) Trust, or at least hope, that God can intervene in our life for good.
4) The willingness to be guided, guarded and grounded in God’s presence with us.
If prayer is that basic, why do some of us give up on God? Why don’t we believe in God? Why don’t we believe that God offers us ways to discern God’s voice amongst all the other voices that clamor for our attention? Why don’t we trust God at all times—not just during a crisis?
Part of the answer is what I have just shared with you, but there is much more that complicates our awareness and trust of God. Here are some possibilities. It may be that:
No one has helped us to make prayer a daily spiritual discipline.
We have no person with whom to pray each day.
We have prayed and “nothing” happened (i.e., God did not answer our prayer in the way that we had hoped or expected.
We have not made an effort to learn about prayer and all the different ways that people have prayed over the centuries.
One of my clergy colleagues in Maine was not especially interested in prayer. However, on 9/11 (2001) when the four airplanes were hijacked and nearly 3000 people lost their lives, she prayed a very appropriate prayer. All day long she and a friend kept crying out, “Oh God!, “Oh God!,” “Oh God!”
She was helpless to undo the damages to the buildings, the planes, or the people who died that day. To their credit, those two women did not give up on God. Perhaps a significant aspect of prayer lies in not giving up on God. One of the lines from that 3-day weekend that I mentioned earlier is spoken by the spiritual director to each person. The spiritual director says, “Christ is counting on you.” The response is, “I am counting on Christ!”
When we don’t commit ourselves to depending on God, we make a spiritually-damaging mistake. We either decide to depend on ourselves or on another person or group. In effect, we make the mistake that many people in the ancient Near East, in nations around the world, and even in modern America make. We act like little gods. Carried too far, we become so self-reliant that we imagine that God is not real or that “God is too busy to bother with me.” Some of us tell ourselves that we don’t need God or any representatives of God.
That spiritually-damaging attitude comes from the many people who have told me in one way or another that they don’t need God right now. They are managing just fine as they are. The mistake is to believe that God is only to be called upon when we are in deep distress. Or when someone or some group that we care about needs God’s help. In those circumstances we naturally plead for God’s help. However, whether we are praying loudly or softly, occasionally or frequently, by ourselves, or with a large group, spontaneously or with pre-written or formal prayers; we may actually not discern God’s response. We might even fail to notice what God has already done even before we prayed.
When we are tempted to give up on God, it’s important to remember that God has not and will not give up on us. In fact, God has almost certainly been helping in ways that we may not ever recognize. To summarize the importance of not giving up on God, let me close with two verses from the Sermon On the Mount:
“Ask, and it will be given to you;
search and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks receives,
and everyone who searches finds.
And for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
(Matthew 7:7-8)
As always, I welcome your responses.
Rev. Larry LaPierre 1 October 2022
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15 September 2022
Why Forgive?
It is a rare day when we hear of a family, a church, or a well-known person plead for mercy – and even forgiveness – for having caused pain, suffering, death or another type of loss. Of those who do take responsibility for their behavior, the apologies often sound anything but real! Philosophers, theologians, pastors, priests, psychologists, police, and parents along with judges, lawyers, politicians and other public servants want to know “Why?” Why do some of us do terrible things to one another and then not apologize sincerely? Is it true that we are so mixed up as a society that we are truly unable to prevent such horrific violence? Why can’t some of us even muster a genuine apology?
With or without answers to these questions, many of us must face the public outcry about how these terrible events should never have happened! The continuing violence and the fear that springs to life when a gun is drawn, a shot is fired, someone cries out in agony, or a person falls to the ground dead, are so awful that we try not to get involved. These are not hypothetical questions for an ethics exam or topics for a term paper. They are part of day-to-day life where I live and where many of you live!
How do we respond when it’s clear…
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26 February 2022
Where is the Voice of the Christian Church?
For most of my life I have failed to make sense of war. One of my earliest memories of the results of war include being a 7-year-old boy living in Berlin, Germany. I was there because my father, a career non-commissioned officer in the U. S. Army, had sent for us once the blockade of Berlin by the Soviet Union had ended. Not surprisingly, it never occurred to me in 1949 that perhaps I was there to see the horrendous damage done by the Allies to Germany. Regardless of how we feel about Nazi Germany, one part of God’s people severely damaged another portion of God’s people. Piles of rubble from bombed out buildings, including homes, were no further than the end of the street. Bullet holes were in evidence in the exterior of the home we were assigned to inhabit.
All of my adult life I have struggled with what drives some people to initiate war while others denounce it as inconsistent with the will of a loving God. Still others proclaimed that it was precisely that same God who affirmed war as the only sane response to an enemy.
Two observations keep surfacing as I consider the merits of war…
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5 February 2022
What Happened to the Earth?
THESIS: HUMANITY HAS FAILED TO PROTECT THE EARTH. Genesis 1:27-31 (Quail Hollow)
There’s an old Southern Gospel song that I first learned at an evangelical church in Massachusetts. The first verse expresses what a lot of Christians have felt for decades and even longer:
This world is not my home; I’m just a passing through, My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door, And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.
There’s a lot more about how wonderful heaven will be, but meanwhile…
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20 December 2021
The Meanings of Christmas
Christmas is the “most wonderful time of the year for many of us. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in his poem “Christmas Bells,” said it as well as anyone:
“I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat,
Of peace on earth.
Goodwill to (all)!”
However, for Christians there is often more to say and to experience about Christmas. When our children and our siblings’ children who don’t visit very often are able to join us at our local church Christmas pageant we get to remember what Christmas was like years and even decades ago. We not only remember what was said and done in these pageants. We also may re-experience the grace of God as the retelling of the miracle of Jesus’ birth reawakens our desire to draw closer to God.
However…
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25 June 2021
There is a Balm in Gilead
There are nights that I sleep soundly and awake with the hope that comes from knowing that I and everyone else lives because of God’s love. We may experience God’s creating love as God renews the earth we stand on, the air we breathe and the water we drink. We may experience God’s redemptive love. Someone may have pointed out our involvement in some sinful or truly unkind way of treating ourselves or other people. For a moment, a day, or a period of many years, we may have lived with the burden of being a sinful person. Then God found a way to speak a word of forgiveness, a reminder of God’s love that saved us from even our own condemnation. We may even have been shown and repeatedly reminded that God has need of our involvement in building the Kingdom of God within our hearts and communities.
As with all-too-many friends of mine, we may have chosen to ignore God’s call. In fact, if we felt called to serve God we may have ignored God’s call. Why do we sometimes deliberately choose not to accept a call from God? There are at least a few reasons that may show up at any stage in a person’s life—a person such as you or me.
Truly some of us believe that we simply cannot be effective in serving God because we lack the education, the learning ability, or even the sense of wholeness that we believe we would have if we were truly called by God. Perhaps we have sinned in such a grievous manner that we feared the shame that we would feel if this sin were ever disclosed. Or, even worse, we may believe that we have committed the so-called “unforgivable sin.” Often, we simply could not see past our accumulated sin, brokenness, fears and selfishness to believe that God can heal our inner spiritual lives…
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17 September 2020
A Meditation About God
Some people wonder about God. Others spend a lifetime learning about God through study and experience. There are yet others of us who hardly take time from our daily routine to notice the impact that God has on this world—unless, of course, we are moved by the beauty of a particular sunset or perhaps a performance of a hymn like “Amazing Grace” or Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. There is another group of us who are moved, perhaps frightened is a better word, to wonder where God is when we are in the midst of a crisis (i.e. as in “There are no atheists in foxholes!”).
Why not? Do we seriously imagine that what we learned about God as children is enough to empower us to know, love and serve God throughout our lifetime? My experiences as a scientist, a church pastor, a board-certified hospital chaplain and now as a retired clergyperson have given me reason to wonder why I have not thought about God and God’s servants more often. I have not lacked for reminders of God’s call to me. Is there something about the human soul or spirit that interferes with my desire, my ability or my willingness to look deeper into myself (my soul, my spirit) to better realize that God is speaking to me and to each of us?
Do we somehow feel unworthy of God’s love? What kind of a God would want us to feel unloved and to refrain from sharing the awareness of God’s love with others who have forgotten, never learned, or feel unworthy of God’s love?…
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1 July 2020
This Little Light of Mine
A few decades ago, when I was still serving as a church pastor in northern New England, I spent time every Sunday leading a worship service for the children. It was not part of the main service. I wanted the children to be able to worship God without feeling as if the adults were waiting for them to sat something that was funny or that would otherwise distract any one from becoming aware of God’s presence with each person.
The children’s worship service was held before they went to their Sunday school classes. It was a special time for the children, their Sunday school teachers and me. As part of this children’s service we sang hymns that the children knew or that I could teach them. One of our favorite hymns was “This Little Light of Mine.” The words and the music are in The United Methodist Hymnal (# 585). The words are simple, but not at all childish:
“This little light of mine, I’m goin’-a let it shine” (sung 3 times)
“Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine”…
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25 May 2020
Grief
There are many reasons to grieve, and I suspect that each of you who read this blog can readily call to mind one or more losses from which you have not yet healed. After all there are some reasons to grieve over losses which can never be set “right” again. Many people have lost jobs to which they may never return. Others of us have been slandered in ways and with such intensity that we will never regain our good name (i.e. reputation). Some have been denied an opportunity to obtain a college education. Then there are all the friends, family and neighbors who have died.
However, even this list does not take into-account some of the more contemporary reasons for deep and long-lasting grief. Thousands of parents grieve and will continue to grieve because their children have been taken away from them at international border crossings. The children in turn grieve over the forced separation from their parents’ love and protection. The children often lose the right to safety, dignity, hope, a good education, respect for their culture, etc.
What do we do about all of these as well as other forms of grief? I can tell you what does not help grief…
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22 April 2020
Be Perfect as God is Perfect
When United Methodists are about to be ordained as elders, we are each asked a series of 20 questions by the bishop who is about to ordain us. These questions date back to the 18th century to John and Charles Wesley—the founders of Methodism. If there is more than one person to be ordained the usual procedure is for the bishop to address each of the 20 questions to the candidates as a group. In turn, we answer as a group.
That may sound easier than being called forward individually, to answer those questions with no one on the platform except the bishop in front of us and 500-1000 family, friends and fellow clergy behind and below us. We might even assume that, being together as a group, any confusing or (perish the thought!) wrong answers would be drowned out in the relative Babel of voices aa all of the candidates for ordination answered together. However, Bishop George Bashore’s hearing was in excellent form on both occasions of my ordination (deacon and elder). I’m sure that he heard every answer…
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25 March 2020
Fix This Now!
Every day is a new opportunity to love God! God even makes it possible for us to love God and to recognize God as the giver of all good things. Life is a daily gift from God. Every breath I take, each person who loves me, every opportunity that I have to see the beauty of Creation and every smile I see on a child’s face is a gift from God.
Yes, those are common enough gifts. Yet I have days when it is more difficult to recognize that these gifts are really gifts—God’s gifts! It’s not a problem every day. It is not even a problem on most days. But, yes, on some days I struggle to recognize that God is working as fully in my life as God is working in every other person’s life. Those are days when it seems, in St. Paul’s words that I “see through a glass darkly…”
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2 March 2020
Religion and Politics
Conventional wisdom can help us to avoid some of the pitfalls of life. Here are a few that are worth considering:
- Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
- Let sleeping dogs lie.
- A fool and his money are soon parted.
- Don’t forget to say “Please” and “Thank you.”
What about conventional wisdom concerning religion? I didn’t have to look too hard to find some:
- Religion is a private matter between a person and God.
- There are no atheists in foxholes.
- Religion and politics don’t mix!
- “Spirituality is for people who’ve been to Hell and religion is for those who haven’t.”
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15 April 2019
Holiness and Holy Week
Holiness is not exactly a new concept for people who are open to God’s presence. In fact, holiness is a quality that enables us to recognize what is sacred, real and good in all of God’s people. It keeps us humble when we recognize how difficult it is to keep the door to our hearts open.
That open door requires humility, courage and selflessness that, lacking God’s grace, none of us could ever hope to develop. Holiness is based in part, on self-awareness and on our awareness of God’s will for us. As much as we might imagine that we would like to be the next Mother Theresa of Calcutta or the next Albert Schweitzer of Lambarene, the reality is that most of us are not willing to make the sacrifices that they made in serving “the least of these brothers and sisters of (Jesus).” (Matthew 25:40 CEB). Still, we are called to love as Jesus loves.
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25 March 2019
The Secret is Simply This
One of my favorite hymns proclaims “There is No Secret what God can do. . . What (God’s) done for others (God) will do for you.” Is that true? Is there a secret to serving God? It can be difficult to believe that God will do for us what God has done for others. Look around! Thousands of people in the city where I live (San Jose, CA, USA) are homeless. Others are 1 or 2 paychecks away from homelessness. Many are forced by lack of other opportunities to live in makeshift “tent cities.” Do the people living in those “tent cities” ever ask God, “Why did you do this to me?” or “Why did you let this happen to me?”
I would be very surprised if the homeless, jobless, chronically ill, aging and others who live here in the United States of America as well as around the world will continue to suffer quietly. They lose increasing amounts of control over their lives. One major reason for their suffering is that they don’t receive a fair share of the nation’s wealth. It is being concentrated in the hands of a very small percentage of people. However, just as the people of ancient Israel cried out to God for relief from their oppressors (Exodus 3:7-12), so will those who suffer needlessly in our time cry out to God for relief.
Is there a secret? Has someone failed to disclose how and why we should relieve the suffering of people whom God loves?…
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22 January 2019
What Times Are These?
Charles Dickens opened his famous novel A Tale of Two Cities with a sentence which many of us recognize but can’t quote the source. He wrote about the events leading up to the French Revolution of 1789 and the consequent horrors that ensued when the peasants had finally gotten angry enough with to do away with much of the French aristocracy. He begins the book with these memorable words. “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times . . . .”
However, there is more to that first sentence than most of us know. Dickens also said,
“It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the Spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going the other way.”[1]
My sense is that Dickens’s description fits what is happening right now all over the world. What we notice and how we respond to it depend very much on what our experiences have been like up to the point of knowing that this suffering is too much suffering. So, we ask, “What is going on? Is this truly the time for all these terrible events to be happening? Is this God’s time? Why is God allowing all of these forms of suffering to happen at the same moment in history and in so many places? Are these times somehow different from all the times of suffering in the past?
What am I suggesting? I’m suggesting that we look at what we live with as well as the suffering of countless other people around the world to see how they are connected. One of the experiences that we share with people worldwide is the suffering brought on by war. For literally thousands of years people just like us have wondered, “Where is God when we go to war?” Almost unnoticed in recent years are changes in what we expect of God in the midst of suffering around the world…
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28 November 2018
The Peace of Christ
Peace seems to be as elusive as ever. Whether we are focusing on the inner peace that we often associate with the peace of God or the peace that many give their lives to preserve in war, real peace flows from the human heart—not down the barrel of a gun. We will not find real peace, however, unless we begin with God. Experiencing God’s peace requires a specific foundation. That foundation is God’s grace. Without God, we have no hope for peace.
With God’s grace we are equipped to share mutual respect for our neighbors. We also are able, with God’s grace, to heal inwardly from the spiritual challenges and damages that most of us encounter almost daily. Because of God’s love we can hope for the future of all of God’s people. If we are blessed to arrive at this stage, then we face another huge step. We face a particularly spiritual challenge to our inner peace when we are asked or forced to go to war. Inner peace does not survive very easily or for very long when we are violent toward anyone. We cannot delude ourselves into believing that war and peace can coexist in anyone’s heart. Thinking that we can do so only makes us more neurotic as a nation and as individuals. Nor does it clear the way for the advent of the One we know as “The Prince of Peace.”
There are other roadblocks to our inner peace with God. A major distraction from God is the compulsion to buy things all year long, many of which we don’t need, and then intensify our search for “right things” to give to each other at Christmas. We get so caught up in exchanging gifts that we risk missing the greatest gift of all…
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11 October 2018
Putting Down the Burdens of the Past
Yes, there really are a lot of obstacles to living a life guided by God’s will and empowered by God’s grace (i.e. God’s gift of Godself to us). Temptations are, as a group, a major obstacle to what God is trying to do for us and through us. As someone said years ago, “I can resist anything except temptation.” Of course, temptations vary with age, ability, experience and other factors. I live with the task of resisting the temptation posed by dark chocolate!
At least some of our temptations are actually good for us in modest amounts. I like to cite my late friend Tony O. as a witness in my defense. Tony told me that he had a square of dark chocolate (1” by 1”) every day. Tony died recently at the age of 98—not from the dark chocolate.
There are, however, things that we either swallow or otherwise allow into our inner selves that are far darker and much more dangerous than the darkest chocolate. They are the forces from many sources, material or spiritual, that pretend either to be good for us or at least “not as bad” as what our neighbors are doing…
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1 September 2018
Holy Ground
For some of us the phrase “Holy Ground” doesn’t mean very much. In fact, unless we have visited a church, synagogue, mosque or another place of worship as part of our spiritual journey, it is seldom discussed. There is one exception to that claim. The ground upon which someone is killed in the line of duty, whether a member of our military forces, a law enforcement officer or another first responder, is often sacred.
We have only to do a little research to discover some of the poetry from World War I that attests to this. I remembered enough of a poem by John McCrae from the first World War to find his famous poem “In Flanders Fields.” The first two lines are, “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses row on row.” Flanders is an area in Belgium that was the site of fierce fighting and death for many men. I am especially moved by pathos in the next quatrain:
“We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and how we lie,
In Flanders fields…”
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31 July 2018
A Grief Among Many
If I tried to sum up my hopes and my prayers for my recently deceased sister, I could not do it in a few words. Like most of us who grieve over a loved one’s death, I find that I need some help in living with and hopefully, recovering from the pain of a life that was meant to be so much better that it was. Yes, I do pray about my grief. Yes, I do talk and pray with my wife and a few friends about it. However, I believe that grief, like joy over the birth of a healthy baby, is a cause for the community who knew the person to gather to recognize that a life has ended here. We gather either in celebration of their life or in grief over the death of the person and probably both. I base my claim on what John Dunn in 1624, “No (person) is an island.” No one lives and dies without affecting many people. How we live our lives also has a huge bearing on how we believe that life ends and what happens at the point of death.
It seems to me that Californians do celebrate life, and we do it well. However, the culture within which Jane and I acquired most of our life values, did not celebrate life all that well. Many people from Northern New England do not feel enough joy to celebrate life. Life has often been too hard for them. Instead, they grieve deeply when yet another person that they cared about dies. So, knowing something of the lifelong suffering that my younger sister underwent (which she only revealed to me after she had divorced both of her abusive husbands), I hesitate to tell anyone that faith is enough to cope with death.
For many people it is. However, trusting God to turn even the greatest suffering (especially that of Jesus) into something…
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12 May 2018
Mothers and Their Day(s)
A mother’s love and a mother’s pain
Often mix together again and again.
It’s not really easy to maintain her inner calm
When a child literally calls up feelings that arise in
Herself and in all who disapprovingly watch
Ready to criticize whatever she does.
Our mothers, yes, our mothers, whether due to lack of experience or energy
Must cope with a child so demanding that nothing short of Divine Intervention
Is worth even a mention in coping with children who enjoy pushing their Mom’s
as far as they can…
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6 March 2018
Revisiting a Very Old Discussion
The wife is speaking to her husband of many years. She asks him, “Why don’t you tell me that you love me anymore? The husband’s response is, “I told you that I loved you when I married you, didn’t I?”
She admitted that he had. “Well, then, if anything had changed, I would have told you.”
To men of my age and older, at least in northern New England where we are from, that joke was funny. Notice that I wrote “TO MEN.” It can be quite painful to listen such jokes if you are a girl or a woman. If you really want to know how hurtful it can be for a woman to have to listen and be nice while we men share our brand of humor, ask a few women how they feel after you tell your joke. They just might tell you. We men often ignore the impact of what we say about others. We may try to write it off by saying “Oh, we were just kidding,” or else we accuse the woman of being “too emotional.”
Sadly, there are far too many men like me who grew up hearing this kind of humor at the expense of women. We are not even conscious of how mean we can be. We may spend a lot of time studying the Bible, listening to our pastors, and even working hard on good deeds for our church. That does not make up for our mistreatment of women. Here and throughout the world we still see girls and women who are being used to take care of the household, bear and raise the children and satisfy their husbands sexually even when the women are bone-tired…
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7 February 2018
The Beginning of Prayer
Whenever I read Psalm 8, I am reassured by the message that we matter a great deal to God. I am particularly struck by verse 4 where the writer simply marvels at God’s attention to us: “What is (humanity) that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?
Yet, I am dismayed that we, though loved by God, also live in a world in which people just like us ignore, deny or actively oppose what God calls us to be and to do–namely, loving servants of God. We struggle to cope with people who may not recognize that many of us struggle with state(s) of apathy, depression, anxiety or some other burden. If we know that we are part of God’s family, we need to remember that we are always loved by God no matter what state of emotion, spirit, mind, body or relationship that we currently experience.
Followers of Jesus Christ and that is what we are called to be, need to be vigilant in maintaining our faith in God. The alternative is to watch, or to later be told that someone else watched, as we slowly lost our faith in God. Yes, prayer is a way to maintain our faith in God, but how many of us pray about our actual relationship with God? It may be difficult to pray for anything but a list of what we want “fixed.” We may be overwhelmed by what is happening to us and around us. Still, simply telling God our list or describing our current suffering is not all that we need focus on as we pray. Those are not wasted prayers.
However, there are other ways to pray for other reasons than fixing all that is broken in the world…
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8 January 2018
Lord, Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace
St. Francis of Assisi was a remarkable person of his time (1181-1226), and he still is widely admired. He gave up everything, and I do mean everything, that he owned or had any hope of inheriting from his father to follow God’s call to rebuild God’s Church. Francis lived in poverty rather than allow material possessions to cloud his awareness of what God had called him to do. His name lives on in the order of priests that he founded: the Franciscans.
If he had done nothing more than create what we have come to know as the “Prayer of St. Francis,” I would thank God for this remarkable follower of Jesus Christ. I have included his prayer at the end of this blog for each of us to read and to explore how it could help us. I think of it as one way to prepare myself to accept what God wants from me now. If we want to know how healthy our souls are, a question that I discuss regularly, we each first need to examine our own soul. This prayer can help us to do so by causing us to answer the question, “How close am I to being who God wants me to be and to doing what God wants me to do in each of these areas of my spiritual life?”
What I notice about myself is that using this prayer slows me down, and that is not a bad thing. If I try to rush the prayer I begin to feel frustrated. I am in awe of the first petition in this prayer: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.” Do I really want to be someone whose life is focused on bringing God’s peace into even my little sphere of influence? It’s risky being committed to working for peace. After all, if we work for peace we might upset some people…
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15 December 2017
Troublesome Questions at Christmas
Over 38 years ago as I was asking myself, “What am I doing here?” I had just left a well-paying job as a senior engineer at a Fairchild Semiconductor plant in Portland, Maine to go north to Bangor, ME. “Why?” Several people had also wondered. Not far into my first test in Church History 101 the question resurfaced. The professor had just interrupted our concentration on the blue-book exam to say, “I don’t want to upset any of you, but look out the window.” It was October 9th, and it was snowing! In the years to come I discovered the answers to my first question, but it required asking many other questions.
I still am searching for answers to some of my questions. Strangely enough some of them come up at major holiday/Holy Day times like Christmas. For example, here are a few that are not limited to Christmas season, but they are certainly questions for which I do not have glib answers at Christmas:
- Why do I have so much when others have so little?
- How can I best help a person or a family in need?
- What am I really celebrating at Christmas?…
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24 November 2017
A New “Black Friday”
Minutes before starting to write this blog I made a new and sad connection with the term “Black Friday.” At just before 6 a.m. today (11/24/17) the Washington Post reported an attack on a mosque in Egypt (in northern Sinai). At that time at least 235 people had been killed. The report indicated that a suicide bomber had detonated his bomb inside a mosque. Others died from gunshot wounds.
The murders of Muslim worshipers are deplorable and needs to be condemned by everyone. Even as we pray for the survivors and the families of those who died, a “brutal response” is promised by Egypt. It is a test of anyone’s faith to have to endure such violence. Where was God in this carnage? Worship of God should be safe whether we are Muslim, Jewish, Christian or any faith group.
This is a tragedy in a long line of tragedies in the Middle East. The Washington Post also reported that over 1000 security force members have been killed since 2013 in northern Sinai. Every one of those victims, their families and those who were injured or otherwise traumatized needs spiritual care. The spiritual damage is impossible to fully appreciate especially for the families of those murdered in the Mosque. There are reports that at least some of the worshipers belong to the Sufi branch of Islam. Sufis are regarded as heretics by some hardliners in Islam.
How do we react to this latest act of terrorism and destruction? That is a question for each of us as well as…
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17 October 2017
A Morning Meditation on October 16th, 2017
What does it mean when we wake up in the morning? I don’t often ask myself that question because I am usually focused on preparing for whatever is ahead of me that day. I am aware that God is with me but only just a little aware. Does that sound strange coming from a retired pastor?
Despite all of my training in theology, spirituality and pastoral care, I sometimes find it more difficult to think about God when I first awaken. This isn’t an everyday experience, but it happens often enough to concern me. I wonder if my Parkinson’s disease is slowing down my thinking and my awareness of God. Some days it seems that it is.
After breakfast I feel a little more energized, and I look in the book of daily devotions known as Disciplines 2017 published by The Upper Room. It focuses on the assigned Lectionary readings for the week. I pick up the Bible to begin the search for today’s reading: Exodus 33:12-23. In fact, I don’t need to search. The Bible opens, without any conscious effort on my part and with no bookmark, to the exact page of the recommended reading for this day.
What is the message about or from God this morning? Of course, the Bible always is about God’s love for humans like us, but it’s also about how we respond to God’s love. Today’s reading is about how God loves the people of Israel so much that God promises Moses that God will be with God’s people when they set out again from Mount Sinai…
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13 September 2017
CHARITY – How Does It Happen?
Charity–it’s not always a positive or even a neutral word. Frequently it’s used to describe a kind act–as in an act of charity. Usually that means giving or doing something for a person who has a need of some kind. However, the same word can also be used derisively as in “That person lives off of other people’s charity.”
The root word that is translated as “charity” in older Bibles is “agape.” in 1 Corinthians 13 it expresses a depth of love which centers on the well being of the person whom we love–not on us. This level of love is often needed when helping people who are desperate for help and angry about needing to ask. In my experience charity often, but not always, involves giving money. However, sometimes money does not go directly to the one asking for help.
When I joined a clergy group in Belfast, Maine in 2002 I listened as the pastors of several churches wrestled with the plight that some of their parishioners faced in what was then a time of rapidly rising heating oil prices. Winters in Maine can be bitterly cold, and not having enough money to buy fuel oil can endanger life.
Pastors in northern New England usually don’t have very large discretionary accounts. Nor, typically, do they have parishioners who can be called on in an emergency for $250 to $500.00 or more to fill a family’s empty oil tank. So, the group of pastors I met with pooled their limited funds…
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21 August 2017
Nothing Should Separate Us From God’s Family
The Church has not always been either helpful or consistent about one of its bedrock claims. The claim is that God loves each and every person. That’s great news to some and a surprise to others! In reality that isn’t the whole story. Depending on which denomination or independent church we attend there may be many rules, expectations and doctrines that we must accept before we are encouraged to believe that God already loves us–just as we are!
I’ve worshiped in churches where the message frequently dwelt on sin. Often the sins of the world “out there” were targeted. On other occasions the focus seemed to be us “in here” (i.e. in the congregation) as sinners. We learned that our only way to escape the “fires of hell” as the consequence of our sins was to accept that we were helpless. We needed to believe that it was only the blood of Jesus that “washed away” our sins. Joining some of these churches might not be an option for those who could not affirm these teachings about sin and Jesus.
However, sometimes the less conservative or even liberal groups went to the opposite extreme. They were reluctant to talk about the reality of sin and personal accountability. It was as if sin was simply not a concern. Instead, we were challenged to go forth and do good. Questions about whether God wanted us to serve God in a particular way were not welcomed. We were expected to believe that if we meant well in whatever way we tried to help people, even though we didn’t pray for guidance first, then God would or should be pleased…
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24 July 2017
Addiction: Our Decisions and Their Consequences
Reading some of our older son’s blogs on addiction and spirituality led me to reread portions of Gerald G. May’s book about both topics. His book was entitled, Addiction and Grace—Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions. Gerald May M.D. was a psychiatrist who was also at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. He was a Senior Fellow in Contemplative Theology and Psychology” there. His book builds a very strong case for realizing that addiction to anything (he provides a list of over 150 addictive experiences) affects all of who we are—not just our bodies, minds or our relationships.
Dr. May reminds us that addiction has a very profound impact on our spiritual journeys as well. There are few, if any of us, who are so close to God that we can be claim that we are addicted to nothing. It might be an over the counter medication or a prescribed medication. It could just as well be being popular, stress, winning, being in charge, making money, chocolate or always being on time, etc.
When I was a child, and until the day he died, my dad was an active alcoholic person. I add the word “person” because he did not surrender his personhood just because he was overtaken by what I suspect were the numbing effects of alcohol. Of course, he did not find it easy to let go of the alcohol. Addiction is a soul wound as severe as trauma, physical and emotional abandonment or being denied the basic respect to which we are all entitled…
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29 June 2017
Changing Our Involvement in Ongoing Wars
Some people ask me how I became a pastor and later a Department of Veterans affairs chaplain. If they know that I was a scientist before becoming a pastor and a chaplain they are really intrigued. I begin by saying “First, it’s a long story and you may not have time to listen to it today. Second, the short answer is, “I’ve had a 21-year argument with God.”
Really? Have I truly been struggling with God like Job struggled with his 3 friends and with God after he lost everything? Yes, I did struggle with God like Job for a long time. However, I also persisted like Jacob whom God renamed Israel after the all-night struggle with the man. By the end of that night, Jacob’s hip was dislocated. However, he also emerged from the struggle with a new name ”Israel.” It means something like, “He struggles with God.” That was quite a change from being someone better known for his struggles with family.
One of the problems that I struggle with is the rapid and sometimes destructive changes that are happening even now with many of our social, moral, ethical, religious and spiritual values. I am caught up in in my own need to ask questions not only to find answers to my questions but also ways to encourage each of us to slow down the changes within and around us. We need to ask, “Is this actually good for me and the others who are exposed to yet another change?…
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26 April 2017
Letting Go
Letting go can be difficult—very difficult! Movies, plays and other forms both of entertainment as well as news are rife with stories of people who must cope with loss. Sometimes, as in the death of someone we love, it is or at least feels like an experience of total loss of meaning, hope and even safety. At other times the difficulty has more to do with crushed expectations—as when a well-respected student leaves school before graduating or a deeply trusted person does harm to one of our children and we must “let go” of the friendship and protect our children.
There are other ways that we experience loss in our day-to-day lives. You know them at least as well as I do because we have lived through these sometimes life-changing events either directly or by watching others endure loss. An innocent 3-year-old child is diagnosed with an incurable disease. One of the parents of four children, all under the age of 7, dies in a car accident leaving the remaining parent to cope with a job, a home, four children and the question of how they can manage day-to-day life much less their grief and their children’s grief.
How is it possible to “Let Go” in such complex situations?” It really is not that easy to do so. In fact, retelling the story of our loss over and over again is an important part of “Letting go” of trauma, pain or any loss of control over our bodies, our minds and souls. We may talk about it openly and so frequently that our friends and family lose patience with our continual grieving. Some might even get so annoyed that they tell us to “Get over it!” As you might imagine, that can drive a grieving person into repressing their grief so that they can be more socially acceptable…
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16 March 2017
Praying For Our Enemies
Not praying for our enemies benefits no one—absolutely no one! Then why don’t we pray for them? Perhaps you wonder how I know that we don’t pray for our enemies. It’s a fair question. I don’t know—not for certain. However, I do have one consistent observation based on 65+ years of worshiping in many churches in several denominations. I have not, until the last 3-4 months, found anyone who stated during worship that it was important to pray for our enemies. Most people, when I’ve asked, do not admit to having an enemy. Those churchgoers who do admit to having an enemy focus on avoiding them. In the worst scenario, however, some are so consumed with a desire for revenge that little else matters.
It’s important to be clear about why our “enemies” need our prayers. Regardless of where they come from, they are not born to be enemies. That is learned behavior. A child learns, both at home and in the world at large, what to fear and who the enemy is. A child’s growing sense of who are the safe people and who are the not safe people to be near can be formed early in life. A simple definition of an enemy is one who is not safe to be near for whatever reason.
Once we decide that a person, a group or even an entire nation is not safe to be near, we don’t just walk away. We still are responsible for how we treat the person, group or nation that threatens us. I was taught to fight back at anyone who was an enemy at the age of 9…
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16 February 2017
Do Not Fear, and Still We Do!
Why are we afraid? Oh, who says that we are all afraid? For that matter, what do I mean when I used the word “Fear?” Is it really all that important to discuss in this format (a blog)? Let me answer the questions in the order I asked them.
- Why are we afraid? I believe that being afraid is the appropriate when something big enough to eat us is chasing us. In other words, it has genuine survival value! I suspect that unless we are straying too close to the cage of some enormous shark, maybe a huge alligator or step into a pond filled with piranha fish we’re not likely to become some creature’s meal.
- Who says that we are all afraid? Count me in as one of the people who admit that I have experienced fear several times in my life. However, sometimes we get so frightened about our well being, that of someone we love and even that of our nation that we don’t know how to cope. We either cannot or will not believe that the situation if as bad as it is. So we search for a way to cope. One of my favorite ways to cope (I have several) is to either pretend that something awful did not happen or will not happen. On a trip back to Maine 20 years or more ago, I said that I wanted to see a pastoral friend named “Ralph.” Jane listened and then sadly reminded me that “Ralph” had committed suicide the previous year. I had been too afraid to admit that he suffered that much. I may have felt some guilt or sadness at not being there to help him…
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6 January 2017
Resolutions & God’s Grace
It’s that time of year again. From New Years Day to roughly the end of January many of us make promises that we suspect will not be easy to keep. Still, we make them. Why? There are lots of reasons. Maybe our doctor convinced us to lose weight, exercise more, relax or develop a hobby. We may have decided to be free from an addiction, a dysfunctional relationship or some other burden.
How do we know that we won’t have an easy time of it? Well, some of us have been down this road before. We make promises to God, to our spouse, our doctor and to whomever else we trust to hold us accountable for our promises or resolutions. Some of us, however, don’t ask God what God wants from us. As a result we may demand much of ourselves in places where God is not asking us to change. We’re at high risk of failing. Here are a few examples…
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20 December 2016
Why Doesn’t Prayer “Work” All the Time?
Many of us have grown up with the belief that all we have to do to have whatever we want is to ask God for it in prayer. We may learn this in Sunday School, youth group or worship. Often this amounts to giving a “to do” list to God. We might have read or even memorized, the verse from the Sermon on the Mount that sounds like a proof text for that view. It’s Matthew 7:7: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” Reading further into the New Testament we encounter John 14:22 where Jesus is quoted as saying, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
So, what’s the problem? Why doesn’t prayer work all of the time? We need to remember to whom it is that we are presenting our needs and desires. This is not like petitioning a judge, a college admission committee or even the manager of a company from which we need a donation for a charitable cause. We are seeking a response from God. Not to put too fine a point on it, but in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) God is often referred to as “El Shaddai” which translates as “God Almighty.” There are lots of other ways of addressing God, but it helps to start with a sense of awe linked with an equally deep sense of humility when we expect the All Mighty God to listen to us! God will listen. We just need to remember that we are a small part of creation, and God is the Creator of all. Otherwise, we won’t be even remotely prepared to pray…
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16 November 2016
Peace: What Is It? How Does It Develop?
Peace is something that many of us say that we want. We may differ, however, over just what it is. Some of us, thinking on a global scale, imagine peace as the natural result of stopping all wars. Indeed, that would be a huge step towards a healing process. But peace is more than just not killing people whether in foreign countries or on the streets of our own cities. It is far more than an armistice (think November 11, 1918) or other cessations of hostilities (think of the end of our Civil War and of the end of the fighting in Northern Ireland). Was peace the outcome of either of these and many other cessations of fighting?
Sometimes we settle for much less than peace when we stop fighting. We leave issues unresolved hoping with time that somehow whatever drove us to fight will go away or be ignored or suppressed. Whether it’s a war fought abroad or a struggle within a family, we need to do much more then cease the hostile attacks although that is usually the first or second step. We need an inner healing that enables us to either begin or return to the path to inner peace—that is, peace that we first experience within ourselves as spiritual people and then share.
Peace begins when we take time to contemplate what is broken or dysfunctional within us. We may discover that we need to heal from whatever isn’t at peace within us before we can have the energy to develop our own inner peace. Counseling, pastoral care, the encouragement of friends and others who understand our suffering can be invaluable…
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16 October 2016
Render Unto Caesar
For those of you who may understand the Bible to be an old and almost useless group of stories that can’t possibly deal with 21st century politics, look again! We are seeing some intense struggles for leadership of this nation especially at the top of the ladder of power.
Seldom have I seen more obvious examples of how the Bible speaks to 21st century issues than when Jesus addressed the question about whether to pay taxes or not (Matthew 22:15-22). When some of the religious leaders of his time asked him whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the (Roman) government, he asked for a coin of that government. After inquiring as to whose image and whose title was on the coin, the religious leaders had to admit that it was that of the emperor—Caesar. His reply was simple, direct and obvious once he had answered the question: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)1
This question of taxes is of concern to generations of people. However, the answer given by Jesus raises both religious and moral concerns that go beyond simply paying one’s taxes. Then as now we face troubling concerns about the inappropriate uses of political and personal power. It is, as has become all-too-apparent recently, an issue that transcends our hesitancy to mix politics and religion. It provides reason to wonder how far our government is prepared to go in securing information about individuals. Do we really believe, for example, that it is OK for the government to monitor some worship services?…
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28 September 2016
Recovering From Spiritual Abuse – 1
As I consider the implications of the title of this message I realize that many of us do not think about spirituality as something that can be abused. Even after we have endured significant suffering because of the person we sought out for spiritual guidance is not capable of helping us to heal. We may, even unconsciously, make choices that hinder our spiritual growth. We may remain angry at a church that expected us to believe what we could not believe.
We may, indeed, have survived and managed to cope with the rejection that we experienced in that denomination. But how are we coping? Are we holding it all in? Are we talking about it so much that hardly anyone is listening? Have some of us turned to substances like alcohol, narcotics, street drugs or food to help us to cope with our problems and not realized the risks we are taking?
How ready are we to recover from our spiritual wounds? How committed are we to work together if we’ve been wounded as a congregation? “Recovery” is a term usually associated with substance abuse (i.e. alcohol, narcotics, food, and other drugs). This came to mind as I reread a blog written by our older son almost a month ago. Jim operates a counseling center. He blogs weekly on issues related to recovery from substance abuse…
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7 September 2016
What is Truth?
Many of us remember the question, but we may not remember where we heard or read it. It’s in the Gospel of John (18:38a) when Pilate responded to Jesus’ statement “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” (v. 38) Of course, we may not accept this definition because it is so dependent on who Jesus is. Truth comes from listening to Jesus. Do we really want to go there?
Many of us are satisfied with what we learned about truth as children. We are content to believe Truth means not lying. Not lying, in turn, requires revealing exactly what we know—no more and certainly no less. It also includes not making up stories about things that never happened.
As we get older we learn that “telling the truth” includes revealing whatever helps others to understand the true situation even when we are not directly asked about it. In courtrooms witnesses are asked if they will “tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” We have politicians, among many other groups, who struggle to live by even the simplest requirements of telling the truth…
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18 August 2016
Internal Disarmament
By the time you read this blog two months will have gone by since the Dalai Lama addressed the California State Legislature. He spoke simply, clearly and to the point. I am still stunned by one of his observations. As he addressed several issues that are important to our nation he turned to gun control. He expressed a belief that may be difficult for many of us to accept.
When I did an Internet search on the Dalai Lama’s speeches, I found his “Message for the New Millennium.” He noted there, and to the California Legislature, that violence is a major problem for the world. We can probably all agree on that. However, he identified an aspect of violence that we may not all agree on. He wrote, “In order to make non-violence a reality we must first work on internal disarmament and then proceed to work on external disarmament.
By internal disarmament he did not mean that a country should get rid of all of its weapons in one dramatic sign of its desire for world peace. He meant ridding ourselves as persons of all the negative emotions that result in violence.”
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3 August 2016
Living Simply
There is a saying attributed to a group of Christians known as “Mennonites” that is startling in its implications. It is, “Live simply so that others may simply live.” If taken seriously by a large number of us it could change the way our economy and even our government at all levels function. Many of us would stop worrying about the latest move by the Federal Reserve Banking system as it affects the dwindling interest on our savings. We would not obsess over the latest clothing styles just to keep us with some designer’s idea of what we should wear. We might even give up hope of ever saving enough to live as well in retirement as we did when we were employed. Instead, we would pay more attention to knowing and helping to meet the needs of our neighbors now.
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18 July 2016
Control – Who Has It & Who Doesn’t?
Given recent events (i.e. June-July 2016) it is worth asking, “Who really is in control?” You might want to ask, “Control of what?” That is a fair question, and the answer at first seems to be quite simple: “Anything!”
Almost anywhere I look there is a problem of control. Sometimes it is visible in a relationship. One person gets his or her way in so many social and private situations that observers realize, even if the two people don’t, that one of the two is more in charge of what happens than the other. Sometimes it is happening in what is supposed to be a loving relationship. Others times relationships are more superficial and are based on providing a service, such as an employee and an employer. We see control issues played out in every kind of relationship from spousal abuse and child abuse to those who betray the trust of their students or their employers. We also have noticed it in the ongoing reality that women with skills and knowledge equivalent to men are paid significantly less and have less access to the top corporate jobs than men…
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6 July 2016
Spirituality Amongst the Suffering
For over three decades there has been an ongoing struggle between those who follow the teachings of their religion and those who find religion to be either irrelevant or an actual obstacle to spiritual growth. Religious people often don’t understand those who walk a spiritual path. Those who walk a spiritual path have often given up on religion. I have walked both paths, and I still do.
It’s when I try to reconcile my personal spiritual path with either some of the teachings or the misadventures of the Christian Church as a whole that I encounter problems. I feel cut off from people who keep their religion walled off in their house of worship and refuse to engage the world. Then there are those of us who would rather work hours or even days on a project that helps somebody than sit quietly for 5-10 minutes twice a day to listen to what God or our Higher Power is saying to us. It is not an either/or position. We can do both. We don’t need to limit our search for God to either a specific religion or a particular approach to spirituality…
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19 June 2016
Living By the Sword
At the end of a worship service that I had led a person asked me, “How do I love a “________”? She named people who belong to a very specific non-Christian religion. I was stunned for a moment since we were both Christian believers. It was clear that she was embarrassed at having to ask the question. It was equally clear that she was afraid of anyone who belonged to that non-Christian faith group. She was clearly defensive, but she trusted me enough to at least ask her question.
How do we get so frightened of people we don’t know who have not threatened to harm us? Why do we not know how to love all of God’s people including those we perceive to be different from us? Of course, the obvious answer is that we divide all of humanity into either “Us” or “Them.” We trust those who are like “Us” and fear “Them.” Still, as a Christian pastor I was shocked that this division had reached so deeply into her.
However, it was hardly the first time that I had seen Christians do this…
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2 June 2016
How Do We Love the People We Fear?
At the end of a worship service that I had led a person asked me, “How do I love a “________”? She named people who belong to a very specific non-Christian religion. I was stunned for a moment since we were both Christian believers. It was clear that she was embarrassed at having to ask the question. It was equally clear that she was afraid of anyone who belonged to that non-Christian faith group. She was clearly defensive, but she trusted me enough to at least ask her question.
How do we get so frightened of people we don’t know who have not threatened to harm us? Why do we not know how to love all of God’s people including those we perceive to be different from us? Of course, the obvious answer is that we divide all of humanity into either “Us” or “Them.” We trust those who are like “Us” and fear “Them.” Still, as a Christian pastor I was shocked that this division had reached so deeply into her.
However, it was hardly the first time that I had seen Christians do this…
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17 May 2016
God’s Opinion – part 1
Quite a number of my former parishioners liked the image of church as a “Filling station”. They saw it as a place to come and be “filled,” as if we were cars. They were not trying to avoid God. It was quite the opposite! They wanted to get just close enough to God to get “filled” with whatever they needed to cope with the world until next Sunday.
What they did not want was for the preacher to make life more complicated. One of the ways that some of us preachers make like complicated is when we try to help people recognize that God has an opinion about everything.
Maybe you want to remind me that God does not have opinions. God has the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 & Deuteronomy 5)
to guide our behavior. As long as we follow those we will be good Christians. Isn’t that true? No, actually, it isn’t. It is more than possible to faithfully live by the Ten Commandments and not be a Christian…
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2 May 2016
God and Women – part 1
Perhaps it wouldn’t happen in our homes. It probably wouldn’t happen while we are outside working on our gardens or while shopping. However, it might happen in church that someone would ask us, “What does the Bible say about the equality of men and women?”
How would we answer? It might be tempting for us to give them a simple answer such as “God loves everyone. Therefore, God loves women and girls as much as men and boys.” That might be enough to satisfy the questioner.
However, it’s not enough to answer the question and assume that is the end of the matter…
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18 April 2016
Coping in an Unsafe World
The world is not safe. We already know that. We are vulnerable to everything from car accidents, home invasions and fraud to human trafficking and war. Every day we face problems that we or others created.
Some years ago I was consulting with a psychiatrist who was a colleague at the VA hospital. I made some comment about a patient who tended to use denial to avoid facing whatever he didn’t want to face. “Jerry” replied, “We all live in a state of denial. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning.”
Jerry was right. Nobody gets out of bed thinking that a tree might fall onto the house where he or she lives. Nor do we wake up thinking “This might be the day that I get a diagnosis of an untreatable disease.” Even less likely are we to awaken wondering whether a terrorist will set off a nuclear weapon in our city.
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31 March 2016
Reflections on Darkness and Light Following Easter
In a world where many ordinary people work hard to serve God daily, there are also terrorists, street gangs, rebels and even nations that focus on agendas that have little to do with God’s plans. Given the opportunity to seize power they justify the use of many harsh tools to punish, to dominate or to destroy. Kidnapping, torture, targeted killing, denial of basic rights to women and others are favored tools for everything from a small cell of terrorists to some nations.
I know that I should be much optimistic since I write this just a few days after Easter—the most important day of the Christian year. Holy Week and Easter are reminders of God’s ongoing love for everyone. Yet, somehow it’s not enough for many of us. Read more…
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18 March 2016
Evidence of a Christian Life
Recently one of our better-known candidates for president declared that he is a Christian. It didn’t take long for his critics to question the accuracy of his self-portrayal. Among those who objected to his claim to follow Jesus were those who pointed to specific examples of the candidate’s behavior, which they viewed as inconsistent with living as Jesus called his followers to live.
Before jumping into a fray like this one, it’s probably more useful to look at our own lives. We need to ask ourselves and our pastors, “What does a Christian lifestyle look like?” Another way to ask the question is this: “If you (or I) were arrested today for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict us?” I’ve wrestled with this question for a long time. Read more…
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2 March 2016
Don’t Worry!
I take the Bible very seriously as I try to understand how God is at work especially in stressful situations. I rely on the guidance of Christian Scriptures to help me understand my search for meaning, purpose and direction in my life. On the other hand, I sometimes run up against verses or whole chapters in the Bible that just don’t make sense.
One of my ongoing struggles with the Bible is in the Gospel of Luke. In chapter 12 from verses 22 to 34. It can be summarized as “Don’t worry” or “Don’t be afraid.” Do you remember when Bobbie McFerrin had a hit song entitled “Don’t Worry Be Happy?” (Released in 1988) I remember liking the music and being very critical of the message. I knew at some level that I wasn’t going to be happy if I didn’t deal with my worrying.
How is it possible to “not worry” in the modern world?… Read more…
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18 February 2016
While We Are Preparing For Easter
Imagine that instead of giving something up for Lent we decide to take on a new way to serve God’s people or to raise a question about God for which we have no clear answer. Well, that’s what I did. I took on a question for self-study this Lent that I have not been able to make complete sense of for at least the last 36 years. “What does Jesus and all those who translate and otherwise communicate God’s Word to us mean when they refer to the kingdom of God (Luke 6:20) or the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 6:20)?”
To some of us it may seem like an easy question. We might respond that the “kingdom of God” or perhaps even the “kingdom of heaven” is wherever God is. Yes, I agree. More importantly, the previous spiritual leader of over a billion of our sisters and brothers in Christ, Pope John Paul II, announced this as his understanding of heaven several years ago.
I would have been happy to stop with his answer… Read more…
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12 February 2016
Lent is Upon Us!
Once again the Lenten season is upon us. Knowing that I am a Christian you might wonder what I am “giving up” for Lent. It’s an appropriate question, but first I want to ask, “Why do need to give up anything?” What is the point of giving up something that we enjoy, are dependent upon or even addicted to if we are just going to resume this experience on Easter Sunday?
As Pastor Kathi (Campbell UMC) pointed out in Sunday’s “Lent 2016” bulletin insert (2/7/16), “fasting is only a spiritual practice if it brings you closer to God; otherwise it’s a diet.” “Fasting” can, depending on how we define the word, can include everything from a total fast once a week to “fasting” from one’s favorite beverage, food or dessert.
When I was a child I sometimes considered “giving up” candy for Lent. It was supposed to be good preparation for the events of Holy Week… Read more…
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25 January 2016
A Closer Walk With God
Most people whom I’ve met in church seem to have some clarity about what they believe about God, the two great commandments (Love God . . . and love your neighbor as yourself), faith, hope, love, sin, forgiveness, worship and the Bible. We aren’t always happy about what we believe, but we have some idea of what being a Christian person in the 21st century is about.
There are, however, some of us who feel like there must be more to being on a spiritual journey than what we already know and do. In my experience, there is. Along with what we believe and then do, we also have reason to ask how this all relates to God’s presence in our lives.
Yes, I know that we are tempted to do as much as we can to help others… Read more…
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11 January 2016
Forgive Us?
To the modern mind the Bible seems out of date. Some may have decided that it is even irrelevant to the “pursuit of happiness.” At the risk of sounding like I am completely out of touch with modern reality, I encourage you to use the Lord’s Prayer daily if not several times a day. It is a remarkable, Biblically based if sometimes troubling prayer.
Troubling? Why should a prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples that has survived for nearly 20 centuries be troubling? Well, there is more than one answer to that question… Read more…