Category: INSPIRATIONAL

Posted on

A Mosque at 9-11

No need to read an article. The headlines are clear. A hot dispute continues: is building a Muslim mosque near the site of the 9-11 bombings of the World Trade Centers right or wrong?

Because the arguments center on the question of right and wrong, I can’t help but remember a statement made about that question many years ago. In China in 1952 a man was imprisoned for his Christian faith. He spent 20 years in prison before his death in 1972. He was Watchman Nee and, “Right or wrong,” he said, “is the principle of the Gentiles and tax collectors. My life is to be governed by the principle of the Cross…” He then went on to tell this story. Continue reading “A Mosque at 9-11”

Posted on

Dying Well, Thank You Dr. Hawthorne

My former Greek professor died yesterday morning. His last great test on this earth is over, and though a painful and swiftly progressing cancer made for intense suffering in his final days, the battle for him is won. He has passed on to glory.

I knew him for such a short time, but as beloved professors can, he marked my scant four years in college with sweet memories. He used to show up to class in cowboy boots. His wife would have us all over for meals. He had a heart for students who struggled with Greek, an uncanny patience with the lot of us. In the upper level exegesis courses, he used to give us copious notes on the text, all handwritten (I still have them). He wrote books and edited commentaries. He was highly respected and admired both by his colleagues and his students. And he was also amazingly approachable and personable. Continue reading “Dying Well, Thank You Dr. Hawthorne”

Posted on

Waking from Slumber

The trumpet blast sustained for a time as the herald cried out, “Awake, you who sleep. Arise from the dead!” I did, roused slowly by the trumpet’s sharp tenor as it finally broke the spell of sleep. I came to, rubbing the crusts of sleep from my eyes only to find in my stupor that I sat amidst a terrible battlefield. The slain were to my right and my left. Some mounted on beasts were horribly wounded but still slicing the air with their weapons. Some wielded long, shimmering swords. Others covered their heads with only bare hands, trying to absorb the blows of an enemy I was blearily trying to make out through the fog of my own daze. I was so astonished at the idea of a battle, so stunned at the thought of an actual enemy that for a long time I could not move. Until the horrific stare of its eyes turned towards me.

Continue reading “Waking from Slumber”

Posted on

Whispers through the Veil

I have met many Christians who speak confidently about God’s conversations with them. They are likely to say things like, “God told me to go down one more aisle; I did, and lo and behold, there was a parking place! Isn’t that just like God,” they ask. I have never had God tell me that, and I have trouble relating to it. I have wondered if they are really hearing God as well as why I don’t seem to hear such things.

Most of my Christian experience is with a veiled God. I can talk to him, but if he talks to me it is not as he did with Adam in the garden. His voice is a silent one, heard in the timbre of my own voice as I read the written words of scripture. On those special occasions when I am praying and unique words spring to my consciousness, I sometimes think it is God, but I don’t always know with clarity those words were his and not just my own imaginings.

Then there are days when I do know, when the words that form in the quiet of my being are unmistakably his and uncannily personal. Though they’ve never pointed me to a parking place, when these moments happen, the words are as intimate as a whisper. They penetrate the veil, and for a moment, the light of God’s face touches mine and reveals his heart to me in a way I cannot deny.

Continue reading “Whispers through the Veil”

Posted on

Uprooting Winter

Rain foiled my intentions today to uproot winter from the yard. I’ve been avoiding the sad, forsaken planters and flower beds, once beautiful adornments now turned brown and brittle from the one-two punch of winter’s cold and my neglect. With the coming of warmer weather this past week, the kids have reclaimed the back yard, and dozens of red plastic cups litter the scene with secret botany experiments, “soups” I was told. Here and there between cups, the 4 and 5-year-old children proudly marked thirty-some of the dog’s land mines with bricks leftover from an addition project, an idea they thought quite imaginative. It’s as though, instead of spring, we are sprouting bricks. A collapsing, old Cozy Coupe is parked in front of the screened door, and “Nella” the scooter is parked haphazardly close so that you can’t open the door more than a few inches without hitting it. A bucket sits on the step with yet another soup that will spill its guts just as soon as someone decides to open the door and exit. Along the back fence, someone ran the Green Gator into the Cast Irons where it has idly collected leaves and pollen and more soups. I wonder how many mosquito larvae may be mixed in with this one, patiently waiting for the first day warm enough to hatch? Continue reading “Uprooting Winter”

Posted on

The Lost Sin

I read a book I can’t finish. I’ve read every page, but I’m not done with it. It smelled of something monumental, sent flutters into the pit of my stomach whispering, “Listen. See. Hear.” The book wasn’t about the next self-help step. It didn’t unlock a passage of scripture that provides a prayer you can pray to find ultimate joy or prosperity. Instead it exposed a sin, an ancient sin that Dante and Chaucer wrote about, Luther mentioned, the desert fathers feared and that monks in monasteries around the world seem to know intimately. One of the famous seven deadly sins, it seems to have lost popularity over the ages; and the reason I’m not done with the book is because I’m afflicted with it. The sin is acedia, and what the author of Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris, wrote about it, cut deeply. I knew I’d been had by something. Continue reading “The Lost Sin”

Posted on

A Cry in the Dark

The birth of God as Son of Man happened in the dark night. A young girl, bulging with the promised Savior, was forced to leave home on a lengthy journey that would bump her along dirty roads at the behest of a donkey and a king’s command to be counted. She was near the time of giving birth. As a woman who has birthed four children in sanitary hospital rooms, who was discouraged from travel during the final month of pregnancy, I can barely imagine Mary making her way to Bethlehem in such primitive conveyance. Yet she did, with the promise that she bore God himself.

Continue reading “A Cry in the Dark”

Posted on

Coming Storm

It’s the feeling I get when I know what I’m in for, when my son wakes up nauseous with a fever and I know exactly what my day will look like: it won’t be what I’d planned. All plans will be set aside. The day will entail temperature taking, medication dispensing, floor wiping, bucket rinsing, clothes and sheets washing, nose wiping, tea and dry toast — you get the idea. The weather feeds this morning all say a storm is coming our way. It’s an official hurricane and expected to land on our town tomorrow. Whether it be a hurricane or the onset of a sudden illness, the feeling I get with news of an impending storm is always the same. I am braced for an altered agenda, and I am mustering reserves to respond with strength and resolve to equal the storm. All focus shifts to one thing, weathering the storm well. Continue reading “Coming Storm”

Posted on

Guilt & Gumption

I am the guilty type. When I was a kid and the teacher asked who had stolen something, I immediately felt red faced and obvious, on the edge of my seat in sure anticipation of her finger pointing right at me. I’ve never stolen anything in my life; I’m just the guilty type.

It doesn’t take much to flush my face and make me squirm so that even when I read the Bible, my natural inclination is to get scared. I tend to think I need to work harder to please God. And I’ve realized a few things about guilty types like me: 1)  We don’t fully understand how much God loves us, 2)  We don’t fully understand the nature of God, and 3)  We don’t fully trust God. Continue reading “Guilt & Gumption”