This pandemic and the world-wide demonstrations for racial justice dramatically illustrate just how we are so precariously at the mercy of each other. This mercy not only operates close to home but far and wide, like a world-wide web. What happened on a curb in Minneapolis put protestors in the streets of London. How we operate within our personal sphere will have a significant influence on what happens elsewhere beyond our imagining. Keeping our distance and wearing a mask not only protects you from the virus but protects those around you from any contagion you may have. All of this […]
If Tomorrow Never Comes
In his classic love song, “If Tomorrow Never Comes”, Garth Brooks knows how to cut to the chase in his music to help us see some of the most important stardust on which we tread daily. In an uncanny fashion, his song poses the same conundrum as the scary childhood prayer some of us dared utter before bedtime: “If I should die before I wake…” The song and the prayer remind us of the tenious nature our life’s timeline and imply a goodness in the past that will stand us good in the unknown tomorrow that might never come. That […]
How’s Your Hyphen?
Had I ever become the prize-winning writer God intended me to be, my first book would have been called Jesus Never Went to Junior High, because he didn’t give us a clue about dealing with this unique subset of early teenagerism. At some point, however, through something akin to a God-given epiphany and thanks to my pastoral duty of preparing middle schoolers to become church members, I discovered that these really were the “wonder years” as portrayed by a 1980’s sitcom. My wife’s calling to be a gifted middle school teacher might have had some influence on this opinion. While […]
Uncles of a Bygone War
They became known as “The Greatest Generation”, those men and women who served this nation during the Second World War. Those of us born between 1939 and 1945 were called the “War Babies”, and 1942 put me smack dab in the middle of the bunch. I don’t remember much about that bygone war itself, except for the rationing coupons for sugar and our Victory Garden in the backyard. I do recall two of my uncles were in that war, one in the Pacific Theater and one who was involved in the D-Day invasion of Europe. Uncle Marshall Bennett, one of […]
Time To Be Holy
Some of us feel guilty and inadequate when we simply can’t find the time to take the “time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord…” as one old hymn suggests. My quiet moments of solitude, which, in any given decade, are few and far between, are very seldom intentional ones. They happen in a more serendipity fashion when I’m preoccupied with other things less holier than thine. The world in which I live and move and have my being doesn’t have a pause button. Time is like an ever-rolling stream, and each day brings an ever-loving load of things […]
Mama’s Will
Mama let me be a lot of things, but three of the most important were these: she let me be one of her children; she let me become a minister; and in her later years she let me have her power of attorney. Had I had that “power” first, we could have resolved a lot of other issues…like what size switch was appropriate for the crime! When she died eleven springs ago, her family and friends gathered in the Chapel of the Cross near her birthplace, and, as a combination of my three roles, I asked them to think of […]
Living Our Eternal Lives Already
Remember those billboards with that disturbing question: “Where will you spend eternity?” The object of that question was to scare the living hell out of the beholder and encourage him or her to come to Jesus before you die and it’s too late to decide. You have to choose, which puts you in the cat bird’s seat; a bad assumption. Another bad assumption is that eternal life can’t begin until we get rid of this current living situation by dying. Raising yet another conundrum: is there life before death? A lot of religions use this outdated worldview as part of […]
Midwives, Husbands, Single Parents
E.B. White puts words on the tension we feel everyday: I arise in the morning, torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. That is clearly the healthy tension in which we all live and move and have our being. Between our obligation to those who gave us these undeserved inheritances and those to whom we shall pass it on in the generations to come. Grandaddy had a useful term to describe the first phase: Beholden. “Beholden” means to be obligated, especially in gratitude. To […]
Body Parts
In early January, back before this ubiquitous pandemic, I acquired a new knee to replace the one my mother knitted together for my date of birth back in 1942. All those years and untold miles made parting with the old one a form of sweet sorrow. However, as they say in some body shops, “parts is parts”. I picked up a new hip several years back and a brand new ankle from Duke. So it will be hard for me to claim that I’m made up of original equipment. But, hey, who’s to say that we need to stay in […]
Easter in an Egg
Easter has a way of bringing out my childhood faith full of eggs and bunnies and family photos after church in that new Easter outfit. Back in those good old days in order to continue to hoodwink you, your parents would buy special eggs made of sugar and filled with the risen Jesus. You must remember them: in one end you could peer into a peephole and see the graveyard and Jesus with a raised hand and the sun glowing behind him. It was such a neat way to bring all of it together: eggs, rabbits and resurrections […]