At those moments when we are beating ourselves up, when our self-talk is negative, we see only our flaws and are unable to see any good we’ve done . . . The scripture reminds us that we are a work in progress.
I batted heads with James in the first weeks I pastored a small church in rural Minnesota. The argument started over a family that was renting our unused parsonage. The summer was hot and humid. Our renter had a large family which meant frequent baths and showers, all adding to the humidity in the house. […]
Rob Bell in is book, “What We Talk About When We Talk About God” says, that the “Gospel is the shocking, provocative, revolutionary, subversive, counterintuitive good news that in your moments of greatest despair, failure, sin, weakness, losing, failing, frustration, inability, helplessness, wandering, and falling short, God meets you there— right there— right exactly there— […]
Remnants of an old hymn I learned in Sunday School came back to me as I listened to a tour guide talk about lighthouse duty being a twenty-four seven job. Lard stored in the basement needed to be melted every hour and a half to provide oil for the light which would warn of perilous […]
The first time I saw a double rainbow was on the day my father died. I had just picked up my son at the University of MN. On the way home we saw a mammoth rainbow fill the sky. I pulled over at a shopping center to get a safer look. Only then did […]
It’s a story I’ve told many times, about the day my almost three-year old took off on his little red tractor and I couldn’t catch up with him. Seven and a half months pregnant and carrying my then 18month old, I couldn’t run faster than my three-year old could scoot on his tractor. When I […]
I’ve come to the conclusion that one of our great problems today, is that too many of us who claim the name Christian have misplaced our values. The era of the anonymous blog in national newspapers allows us to hide behind our words, without acknowledging who we are. Would we say the same things if […]
