Moments

  So, you want the freedom to hate religion, the freedom from religion?  OK.     But will you give the same freedom to those who have it, who practice it?  Oftentimes,   Christian freedom brought persecution for their faith. Is this because oftentimes they didn't live up to the faith they professed? Or was it because people of faith made them uncomfortable?  And then there is one faith persecuting another faith of a different doctrine.  All who believe will fail at living out their faith.  It goes with the territory of trying to be something better and higher than we were to God and the true exercise of our faith.   So it is worse to fail at trying than succeed at doing nothing? So if you fail by not trying to be anything, there is no shame or condemnation, but why persecute?  Why not just let the people of faith, any faith, just be happy with their own delusions as long as there is no injury to others? ...

  After some days of restricted breathing, I can breathe freely again.  There was some music playing, and I took it in with my breathing in and out.  It felt so good to be clear.  Then I breathed through my nose, and it went smoothly.    For this time in my life, God has restored the breath of life within me, and I find myself peaceful and so grateful.   Then I realized that, because of restricted breathing, because of the agony and frustration, I find myself more grateful to God than if I had never had a problem with breathing. Hardship brought me closer, relief, and knowing where and who it came from finds me grateful. Being grateful brings me peace, not because I believe things will always be great and there will never be restricted breathing for me again.   No, peace comes from gratitude, sure, but it comes from adding "nevertheless" in answer to whatever God brings me to.

  When Paul was struck down by the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus, he first asked Who is this?  When Jesus identified Himself, Paul needed say nothing more than, "What would you  have me do?" Before Paul even knew the plan, the cost, or where he was being sent, he was yielded.  His first act was surrender, and his first breath as a new man is a question of obedience.  There was no  bargaining or interest in self-preservation; it was the response of a person who had been undone and remade in a moment. When I thought I was undone and maybe going to die, I surrendered too, right there in the MRI tube at the hospital.  And, I bet Paul wondered like I did. Am I going to survive this?  If I survive, Lord, what would you have me to do?  I was undone and remade to serve God with whatever the rest of my life looked like.  God didn't give Paul an action plan for the rest of his life.  His instructions were just to go to this certain place...

 T hursday before Good Friday.  The upper room was secured for the Passover meal.  Jesus was teaching in Jerusalem.  The Passover meal was prepared.  There is a sense of heaviness and anticipation, and he talks of betrayal.  At sundown, when it was time for the Passover meal, Jesus washed the disciples' feet.  The betrayal was announced, and Judas left. The Lord's Supper is initiated: Take, eat, this is my body, this is the cup of the new covenant."  Then Jesus embarked on some of His most intimate teachings for the disciples and for us as well.  It is a farewell discourse, with a new commandment, that we are to love one another, with a promise of the Holy Spirit, with vine and the branches teaching, with warnings of persecution, and His prayer for the disciples and all future believers. Then they sang a hymn and walked to the Mount of Olives.  He then takes Peter, James, and John deeper into the garden and prays three times, "If it be p...

  Recently, it was my father's birthday.  Most years, I put his old boat in the water, get in it, and reminisce over the fine times we had together in that boat.  I remember that foggy river we traveled down at daylight, and his look when we got to that first throwline, and it had a large tug on it.  The struggle for me to net those large fish and the shared joy when the fish flapped back and forth in the bottom of the boat.   And there were times we just filled the back of that boat up with big catfish, and he smiled a smile I can still see as I paddled the boat now around the pond.  But it is only a pond now.  Life is not a wilderness sort of river you travel miles down to run lines.  Now, in the pond, the boat just goes around in circles until I pull it up on the bank and go about a life as limited as paddling in circles in the pond.   Shouldn't it be, though?  Doesn't life drift away like that?  I am decades older now,...

  Everyone who has run or biked a sizable hill knows the feeling.  At first, it isn’t too bad. Momentum carries you into the first part of the incline.  “This hill ain’t so bad!”     That is sort of how it is with youth.   Things come easily.   If we are blessed, the hill goes on for us; they keep coming at us.      Into the hill, the legs start to strain, and the breathing is getting more labored.   The arms have to pump harder to help out.   Now you see upon looking up that the hill seems so much longer and steeper than it did before—and harder. Yes, it gets harder almost with each step. So at this stage of life, the gloves start coming off for the youth. It goes on and on, pedal stroke upon pedal stroke, and we seem to be barely moving.  Dig down.  This is where the rubber meets the road.   We are youth growing up, becoming men and women in the real world.  Then, it seems, as we begin to approach the...