I sat in a group a few weeks ago—it was a group of clergy, and someone whose ministry I really respect began to speak of the challenges to his spiritual life. Don said, “Parish life can take it out of me. I get busy, then I get overwhelmed—and my spiritual life suffers. I ‘don’t have […]
Faithfulness
Trading Gold for Stones
Why is it so hard to trust your own gift? God gives each of us one unique gift. It’s your treasure. The one thing you have to offer the world. But most of us can remember, early on, looking at our gift and feeling like it was nothing compared to what other people had. It […]
Holding Our Children, and Letting Them Go
This is the weekend to remember our fathers. Fathers struggle. We know this. Mothers hold onto their children, sometimes too closely, sometimes for too long, but once that wet, naked child is placed in their arms they know instinctively what to do. Fathers don’t. We have to learn this stuff. We’re not so comfortable holding […]
All Grace All the Time
“I was playing golf with a friend,” the man said to me yesterday. “And he said—it must’ve been at the 14th hole, I think—he said, ‘John, do you believe in hell?” He put the club down and asked why such a question. The friend explained that his daughter had been blessed with her first baby, […]
Three Dollar’s Worth of God, Please
Yesterday was the commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was martyred for his opposition to the Nazis. He considered taking refuge in the United States, where he was teaching, but he returned to Germany to continue his work in the resistance. He was arrested April 5, 1943 and imprisoned in Berlin. Three days […]
Doug’s Comet
On Saturday I preached the funeral of a great man. Doug McArthur was the Treasurer of Trinity Church in Solebury, Pennsylvania, where I was privileged to minister for eleven years. As I reflected on why Doug had been such a powerful influence in my life, I realized that he was a grand father. He […]
The Cock Crows
At the heart of the “Greatest Story Ever Told” is a betrayal. No one would call their child Judas. The name is slimed with centuries of condemnation: the lily-livered turncoat who betrayed an innocent man for thirty pieces of silver. We might understand how the crowd could turn on Jesus, but how could someone from […]
The Father I Want to Become
This is me and my father. It looks like he is sitting in my lap, but actually he is sitting on a chair, and I am kneeling beside him. We were all of us there, my six brothers and sisters, for his 93rd birthday. We ordered pizza (it’s the birthday dinner he chooses every […]