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After Lent, Easter Son-Rise, and Changed Lives
“The bright Morning Star” came to mind, compressing the Bible’s entire message into one word: Jesus. “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.” Rev. 22:16 I awoke thinking about Resurrection Sunday: church, family at lunch, Easter eggs, and the flowers of Spring. Early, when it was yet dark … Something else came to mind. A movie I wanted to watch. The evening of Easter Sunday, I watched the movie Ben Hur. I’ve seen this movie many times, but I first saw this film as a young girl at the…
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Every Human Being Bleeds Red
The Covenant of Water, this may be the most majestical book I have ever read. Stop. Best book I have ever listened to, all 31 hours and 16 minutes. Read by the author, hearing him tell this story prepared me to read the book, which I plan to read word by word this summer, all 715 pages. The Covenant of Water is a novel written by Abraham Verghese, currently a professor and Vice chair of the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. This leaves out a string of other recognitions and achievements, credentials that hint at his background, that contribute to the authority he demonstrates throughout…
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The Real YOU Abides
Our souls are the real, substantive part of who we are. Our bodies are the material manifestation. I’m reading through my journal written ten years ago and came across the above statement I had written to summarize what I was learning. At the time, I was attending a Bible study in a friend’s home, a study that referenced George MacDonald’s writing. Both C.S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers had been greatly influenced by George MacDonald, a writer in the late nineteenth through early twentieth century. Lewis called him his “master” and wrote an anthology for 365 days composed of MacDonald’s writings. At the time, I was preparing to teach at a…
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Leave Space for God
While at seminary, a friend introduced me to the Hoberman Sphere. This “toy” helped me visualize the sections between joints as pieces in a vast theological puzzle. Theology is how people think and talk about God. Pieces of theology come together bit-by-bit in the course of our lives, not in a linear way, more like a sculpture, placed here and there as you and I go about constructing for ourselves a view of how the world works. According to its inventor, “The Hoberman sphere expands and contracts with its hubs moving in straight lines radiating from the center. Each point of intersection reinforces the structure. If you fully expand the…
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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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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…
