Ancient sowers did not know what they were going to get when harvest time came.
Without multi-row cultivators, GPS, and high tech pest and weed controls they didn’t know what challenges lay in the soil. Out the sowers marched, row-by-row, scattering seed by hand. Only time, sun, and rain would reveal which seeds would grow and which would not. Continue reading How Seeds Are Like the Human Heart
It was not surprising to find a huge maw smiling from the side of one of the hills we were hiking on. We were adventurous college students, so we decided to enter the cave mouth, but as we walked upright into the shallow cave the ceiling began sloping into the hillside causing us to have to stoop, then crawl. The room-sized cave turned into a small tunnel that, at its smallest, required us to squirm on our bellies. Continue reading The Narrow Way
In the 1970’s a comedian named Flip Wilson had an award winning comedy show that won him a Golden Globe and two Emmy Awards. One of the characters he created for his show was a woman named Geraldine Jones who was famous for her phrase, “The devil made me do it.”
The iconic phrase is still quoted as a way of saying that we’re not responsible for whatever it was that we just did. “The devil made me do it.” The writer James would disagree with Geraldine Jones. Continue reading What makes rivers crooked?
His parents were poor. When his mother’s water broke, there was no suitable place for her to birth her little child. So a stable of some sort with a hay-filled crib was the first nursery. Not hardly what you would expect for Messiah.
The first hours of his life were rather spectacular. Angels sang to shepherds about the birth. A star in the sky notified the Magi of his whereabouts. Rumors swirled around Bethlehem that someone important had been born. Expensive gifts were brought by the Magi to his humble birth place. But that was the end of the glorious. Continue reading Born in Crisis
Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds. ~Theodore Roosevelt
I recently remarked to my postal person that virtually none of the mail we receive today is personal; almost all comes with a digitally created label on the envelop and some sort of form inside.
Rare, indeed, is the handwritten post. Continue reading Thanksgiving
Joe and Sue (fictitious names) didn’t want their children to smoke. They knew the terrible cost of smoking firsthand: increased sick days at work, the high monetary cost of smoking, the smell, and the social pressure from people who don’t smoke.
Joe tried to stop smoking on several occasions. He used the patch, hypnosis, cold turkey withdrawal, and the cure du jour. Nothing worked for him. He never got much farther than a month off cigarettes because he couldn’t stand the withdrawal symptoms.
At age 14 Joe and Sue’s daughter started smoking. She tried to hide it from them, but they could smell it on her when she came home. Attempts to get her to stop were met with, “But you smoke.”
Like it or not, Joe and Sue had to admit that their daughter’s smoking was caused, to a large degree, by their own smoking. Some experts say that children of smokers are twice as likely to begin smoking between 13 and 21.
And if these statistics apply to smoking they also apply to other behaviors that children grow up in. If Abraham lived to see his grandson Jacob, he would have seen behaviors like his own: lying, duplicity, and conniving to save his own skin. Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers because of the influence of his father Jacob’s life and the dysfunction of the family.
Parents would do well to be reminded that the behaviors their children observe become the seeds from which the children’s attitudes and behaviors will grow in the future: racism, selfishness, bad habits, etc.
If you want your own children to live in a certain way, you have to model that behavior.
In the Gospel of Luke there are several “quest” stories. These are stories about people who were trying to find something, and they include a paralytic person, a soldier, a woman with a medical condition, a
leper, a rich ruler, a tax collector, and a criminal. In every case these individuals had some condition which they could not personally change.
I like these stories because they are a microcosm of the whole world. In them you will find powerful people who find themselves in perplexing and impossible situations. Who can only say, “I give up; I need help.”
There are people who are so hated by society that they are entirely alone and powerless. People who have medical problems so great that they can’t work in gainful ways, nor are they even allowed to have relationships with their respective communities.
These stories sound like they could be lifted off the front pages of our newspapers: the politician who is barbecued in the political sector because of a daliance with a prostitute. What’s he to do to put his life back together?
Or the single mother who’s just lost her job and has no medical insurance for a sick child. Where is she to find employment or assistance? Will she end up homeless?
And of course, the person who realizes that there has to be more to life than what they are experiencing. This is the person who is asking the hard questions, but may not be willing to pay that cost just yet.
Quest stories are, in my view, a true picture of the human condition. Whether we are willing to admit it or not, we’re all on a quest. This is the subject of my sermon this coming Sunday.
Google announced recently that it is planning to launch an experiment to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country.
These networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today. Communities being considered will be between 50,000 and 500,000 people.
The thought of having such a blazingly fast service motivated a cadre of Mercedians to pool their efforts. So County and City officials, along with Merced Ahead, the Chamber of Commerced, and Merced Boosters got together to press forward with the initiative.
Whether we get this high speed network remains to be seen. However, a great thing was accomplished in the pooling of energy and creativity that occurred here. Take, for example, the 300 people that got together one Saturday to spell “Google” on a local football field.
There is no way to understate the importance of communities of people working together for the common good. We are always better together than we are apart.
I’m in a writing queue of seven pastors. We write a rotating, weekly column for the Merced Sun-Star called “Religion 101.” It’s fun to be able to make the occasional contribution, but it’s also a challenge.
Many people have mental stereotypes of what they think they will find in the column–doctrinaire, dogmatic, preachy, and moralistic. Such stereotypes function as hurdles to understanding, both for the reader and the writer.
Writing in a way that surprises, intrigues, and even irritates is a challenge. For example, how can a writer surprise if what is written is only what the reader expects?
That is what made Jesus’ parables so powerful. A listener would ask Jesus what he thought was a simple-enough question. Jesus typically responded with a story that turned the questioner’s world upside down.
This week’s Religion 101 article is meant to be oblique and indirect. Rather than saying, “We should stereotype other people,” it tells a simple story. Check out this link and see what you think.
The Letters to the Editor section of the newspaper was longer today than usual. Counting the editorial cartoon the letters occupied a full half of the “Perspective” page. Eight letters comprise what I like to think of as the therapy section of the paper.
One screams out, “You really don’t get it do you?” as if they’re carrying on a conversation with a person across the table from them. Another says, “I am writing to inform you of my opinion.” Still another angsts over why a road project is taking so long.
MonoLogue 