Thanksgiving and Repentance

by | Nov 20, 2017 | Uncategorized

Maybe, later in the week, I’ll write about the numerous extraordinarily ordinary and ordinarily extraordinary gifts which are part of my everyday life and for which I am grateful. Thanksgiving’s origins, though, are civic: they have to do with the condition and...

Wisdom from a Four-Year-Old

by | Nov 8, 2017 | Uncategorized

Saturday morning, at Barnes and Noble, I was in the café line to order my venti Hot Cinnamon Spice tea. Just ahead of me was a young family. Dad pushed a stroller with a sleeping 8 month old boy, dressed in Carolina blue inside. Mom paid gentle attention to a four...

Set Free to Love–A Reformation Day Sermon

by | Oct 31, 2017 | Uncategorized

This morning, I had the opportunity to preach a “Reformation Day” sermon in Mars Hill University’s Chapel.  People who know something about my preaching will recognize that I’ve used, yet again, a Raymond Carver poem, the description of an...

Be Quiet

by | Oct 15, 2017 | Uncategorized

These days, finding silence is both difficult and necessary. It’s hard enough to find external silence. Even in the early morning hours, I hear the low hum of appliances, the whirring of fans, the on-again, off-again cycle of the HVAC unit, and the faint sounds...

Healthcare and Just-Love

by | Oct 6, 2017 | Uncategorized

Maybe you remember the desperate and destitute sharecropper in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath who was being evicted from farming the land by its owners who had to return it to the bank.  The “owner men,” as Steinbeck called them,.  . . were all...

Treasures New and Old

by | Sep 19, 2017 | Uncategorized

Jesus once said: “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52).  A householder managed a large estate on behalf of its wealthy owners:...

A Conversation on Art And Spirituality

by | Sep 15, 2017 | Uncategorized

This afternoon, I had the joy to be part of a conversation occasioned by the visit of choreographer Ronald K. Brown who is the artistic director of Evidence Dance Company (scheduled to perform in Asheville on November 10-11 at the Diana Wortham Theater).  Diana...

Little Control, Much Love

by | Sep 14, 2017 | Uncategorized

This past Monday was the somber 16th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks: a plane went down in a Pennsylvania field, another plowed into the side of the Pentagon, and two became passenger-bearing bombs which brought down the Twin Towers of the World Trade...

A Brief Reminder to “Look for the Helpers”

by | Sep 3, 2017 | Uncategorized

The images of devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey have been stunning and overwhelming: whole cities and towns under water; highways turned to rivers; thousands driven from their homes, and hope nearly drowning in despair. It will take years and billions of dollars...