“Do you believe that God is with you, right now while the lightning crashes overhead and the creek rises below?” The two college students I addressed had been leading all through the long hard day, and they glanced around them, their eyes wildly looking for some sense of safety and security. We had evacuated an […]
A Personal Encouragement
On Christmas Eve morning, I received a lesson on vulnerability. Roscoe, our special needs son, is tethered full time to a feeding tube. He can’t feed himself. He relies on this plastic lifeline no more than a few millimeters wide to bring nourishment to his body. Of course, he also relies on my wife and […]
The Difficult Work of Reconciliation
The difficult work of reconciliation is very difficult to write about. In reflecting on the events of the Ashley Madison website hack, I struggle to make sense of it all. As some of you wrote back to us, there is an inability to see how reconciliation can even be an option. Reconciliation is grace-infused, redemptive. […]
Vulnerability: One Step at a Time
Typically, when I hurt my wife with my words or injure a friend verbally, it wasn?t my intention as I started my day. Instead, when I?sin, it is usually accidental, a result of choosing or saying the wrong thing in the moment, rather than preplanned malice. Some sin grows over time. There are little decisions […]
What We Can Learn from Josh Duggar’s Mistakes
Let?s face it, we?ve all made mistakes. And it?s with this in mind that I write the first of a series of posts?on the importance of vulnerability for us leaders. We’ll?define ?leader? as anyone with a sphere of influence. In last week?s news in the United States, it was reported that leaders Jared Fogle, popular […]
Do You Really Want a Cure?
Recently, I was struck by this excerpt from Joan Chittister?s comments on the section of the Rule of Benedict that speaks about discipline within the community. ?The ancients tell the story of the distressed person who came to the Holy One for help. ?Do you really want a cure?? the Holy One asked. ?If I […]
How Then Shall We Live?
The rabbinic tradition had embedded in it an experience that came to be known as Midrash. Simply put, it was the opportunity for the contemporary culture to fill in the blanks that older cultures left unanswered. The Law was still present and good, it was the expression of the Father?s heart for his creation, but […]
