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Do You Know What You’re Doing When You Read?
“You need to know what you’re doing if you’re doing it.” This wisdom came from the mouth of a babe, my then 6-year old grandson. I wish you could hear the way he said it. Like so much of the fast-paced life today, people try to squeeze in (or squeeze out) as much as possible in a 24-hour day, and half the time, do we even know what we’re doing while doing it? Ironically, switching tasks costs time rather than saves it. Like checking email while talking on the phone, one or the other will claim our focus, and when the other intrudes, the brain switches tracks. Imagine a drone-view…
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Thinking about Lent
If you come from a religious tradition that teaches about Lent and how to practice Lent, then you already know more than I do. Last week, I asked a friend who attends a Methodist church if she observes Lent. She said Yes, she observes Lent, and Yes, she will get ashes on her forehead tomorrow. Lent falls on Valentines’s Day this year. I look forward to Valentine’s Day because for me it signifies winter is half over. I shouldn’t hurry through any season of life, but winter drags me down. The darkness––shorter days and longer nights––an illness that usually sends me to bed at least once every winter, temperatures that…
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Timing Is God’s Signature
The idea came to me years ago while walking the neighborhood, a time when several people had urged me to write a Bible Study. I would call it “The Divine Signature.” I visualized life like a blank page as a way to say “Yes, LORD” to whatever God brought into my life. Prof Hendricks told his Bible Study Methods students at Dallas Seminary that only 6% of ideas were any good. Waiting for that thought to register, he then offered the solution. “Come up with lots of ideas.” I have lots of ideas. Since that time, I have had countless ideas, acted on some of them, and most were not…
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Choose Your Hero: A Good Man is Hard to Find
Nearly every movie, book, or TV show has shifted from good vs. evil to bad vs. worse. The heroes from the past no longer exist. Heroes in the past used to represent admirable role models. But as Flannery O’Connor wrote, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Stories used to portray discernible character differences tied to moral absolutes. White hats vs. black hats has morphed into 50 shades of gray, and black holes in space where character distinction no longer matters. The outlines have blurred. Dark hearts conceal themselves under public image management. Every character does as he sees fit. Numerous factors and myriad inputs affect the moral compass each…
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Viva The Las Vegas I Remember
“I would never go there,” the group’s leader said––the person with all the religious status. His remark silenced comments from others. “If I now recognize evil in other people, is it not because I have become evil too? If I see someone has a suspicious nose, have I not smelled the same bad things?” Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club I had told coworkers that for my birthday my husband surprised me with tickets to fly to Las Vegas to see Celine Dion. This guy’s comment made me think how easy it is to make wide verbal swipes against people and places. What made him think he knew anything about the…
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The World, the Church, and Me: Examine My Heart
“O LORD, you have searched me ….” Past tense. David’s story was a story already in progress, and so is yours and mine. Wherever you or I locate ourselves, we exist having made countless choices along the way. The psalmist acknowledges incalculable evidences of God’s intimate knowledge, His mercy, and His grace from before he was born to the last word––everlasting. Continuing from last week, Psalm 139 is a prayer. A personal prayer to a Holy God. The psalmist does not suggest what other people ought to do as if he himself is exalted and exempt from examination. The words in verse 23, “Search me, O God,” “try me,” “know…
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Put up a Lightning Rod
Not long ago during a thunderstorm, my husband showed me a weather map App that displayed the lightning strikes in our area. Amazing and somewhat frightening too. And I thought, Wouldn’t it be something if you and I could see when spiritual lightning strikes a soul? Like moments when a person actually feels the presence of God, or when they experience conviction for sin, or in a situation where God displays his power to rescue someone, or times God gives peace in the midst of a crisis when there is no peace. Wouldn’t you and I be dismayed? It’s those astonishing instances when God breaks through the atmosphere of self-protection…