Growing into It

by | May 4, 2013 | Uncategorized

There are things we can’t know instantly or do easily. We have to grow into them; our capacities have to develop, and our abilities have to expand. Quite often, practice and experience often precede skill or wisdom.  You don’t start playing golf at Augusta...

Institutions Which Serve

by | May 1, 2013 | Uncategorized

“My church is just like family to me,” the middle aged man said.  “I feel closer to the people in our church than I do to my own brothers and sisters; I just don’t know what I’d do without them.” A lot of people use family language to talk about the church....

Expectations

by | Apr 23, 2013 | Uncategorized

We base all of our relationships on expectations.  They might be acknowledged or hidden, spoken or silent, but we shape all of our relationships around them.  Sometimes we make those expectations explicit: for instance, we exchange wedding vows, or sign...

Forget Your Perfect Offering

by | Apr 15, 2013 | Uncategorized

Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” opens with these words: The birds they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say. Starting again is what so many of us want to do, or wish we could do, or try but fail to do. We long for daybreak on a new life and the dawning of...

The Hands of Jesus

by | Mar 29, 2013 | Uncategorized

I remember when our daughter, Amanda, discovered her hands.  I heard her quietly cooing, gently-jabbering, and, from time to time, gleefully giggling from her crib.  I peeked into the little room which we had turned into a nursery; she was resting on her...

Maybe God is the “Fire in the Equations”

by | Mar 23, 2013 | Uncategorized

There is something in us—something sacred, I believe—which recoils from the idea that the universe is its own explanation, that our existence here is a happy but meaningless stroke of cosmic luck, and that there is no Artist, no Designer, and no Life-Giver behind,...

Affirmation of Discipleship

by | Mar 19, 2013 | Uncategorized

We said the following Affirmation of Discipleship in worship at First Baptist Church of Asheville yesterday:  I take up my cross to follow Jesus. Because Jesus commands me, I will love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength.  I will love my...

Beggars for Mercy

by | Mar 11, 2013 | Uncategorized

“We are beggars.  This is true.”  Martin Luther scratched- out those words on a scrap of paper just before his death on February 18, 1546.  “We are beggars.  This is true.”  Most of us aren’t like the beggars, the panhandlers, we will meet on...

The Meaning of Money?

by | Mar 6, 2013 | Uncategorized

What does money mean to you? For many of us, I think, money means safety and security. We depend on money to feed us, clothe us, house, us, provide medical care for us, transport us, and educate us.  Money puts gates around our neighborhoods, fences around our...

Free from the Cage

by | Feb 22, 2013 | Uncategorized

In “The Panther,” Poet Rainer Maria Rilke imagined a great, muscular panther pacing in a cramped cage at a Paris zoo: From seeing the bars, his seeing is so exhausted that it no longer holds anything anymore to him the world is bars, a hundred thousand bars, and...