Ask, Seek, Knock

Many people aren’t sure about God. I don’t mean about God’s existence, though there are people who, for reasons of reason or of heartbreak or of both, have concluded that that there isn’t a god. Instead, I mean people who are unsure about God because they feel...

Reflections in a Troubled Lent

One of my Lenten practices is to reduce the amount of “breaking news” I watch. During last year’s election season, MSNBC was the steady background noise of my mornings and evenings.  Most days, there was less than an hour’s worth of actual news, but it got...

Lent and the Threat of Identity Theft

A few years ago, someone in New York got the number of one of our credit cards and spent a few thousand dollars in stores I never heard of on stuff I’d never use. He also got my Social Security number, filed a false tax return, and pocketed a nice refund. I was a...

A Better Kind of Lost

Several years ago, I got lost in the Pisgah National Forest. I’d heard about a trail that made a loop from the trailhead and back again, ascended enough to offer a challenge, and promised breathtaking views. The friend who’d told me about it said the hike would...

All Means All

Near my desk, in a picture frame I don’t dust often enough, is a fading photograph of our daughter, Amanda, and our son, Eliot. Amanda’s about six years old; Eliot has just turned four.  They’re standing in the bright sunshine of an Easter morning. She has on a...

“Using” Religion?

This semester, I’m teaching a course called “Christian Ethics in Engagement with U.S. Culture”; sometimes the syllabus and the daily news mirror each other in uncanny ways.This past week, for instance, I had been talking with my students about how the nation’s...

Laryngitis and a New Voice

Lately, I’ve been stunned into an uneasy silence. I haven’t known what to say about the last days of Barack Obama’s presidency and the beginning of Donald Trump’s. Even if I could find words to express what I think and feel, I’m under no illusion that what I would say...

Wilderness Life

Three years ago this month, I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma.Two years ago, this month, I ended my work as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Asheville.Last week, my oncologist let me know that the leading indicator of cancer’s activity went down, after having...

New Year’s Reflections from Paris

After lunch yesterday, Eliot and I took the longish walk to Pere Lachaise cemetery. It’s an eerily beautiful village of the dead, and it was an evocative place to spend part of the last day of the year.As we walked among the tombs and headstones, I pondered...