Matthew 25:31-46 There is a story about two little girls in a small English village who decide to spend their summer searching for Jesus. The book is called The Trouble with Sheep and Goats. It’s a little bit of a mystery, but it’s a lot more than that. Something has happened in the village: a neighbor woman has gone missing. The girls are at an age where they can understand some of the adult conversation, but not enough to really know what’s going on. They gather that there is a story behind this disappearance, something all the adults in their street are in on, but they don’t know what it is. One of the girls, Grace, is mulling it over one day outside the church. When the priest approaches her, she asks: why do people get lost. She means it quite literally, but he hears it as a metaphorical question […]
Continue readingMore TagMonth: November 2020
Perfect Love
Matthew 25:14-30 There is an old familiar saying: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it. It comes from that wise fellow, Aesop, who told a story about an elderly man trying to gather up some firewood and finding that he is too frail to carry the load. In exasperation he called upon death to come and get him. To his surprise, death appeared and asked, “What can I do for you, old man?” The startled man said, “O! nothing at all; sorry to have bothered you.” We sometimes wish for things simply because we haven’t thought it through well enough. We wish to win the lottery without thinking through the various costs such good fortune might present. There are enough cautionary tales about people who did win the lottery and have nothing but bitterness and woe from the experience. If you are like me, you think, “But […]
Continue readingMore TagTaking Care
Matthew 25:1-13 Tara Westover wrote a memoir a few years ago called Educated. It’s the story of Tara’s upbringing in a family of survivalists. They lived out in the mountains of Utah, as off-the-grid as they could manage. Distrustful of government, these parents raised their seven children to be self-reliant. The government agents might come for them at any time, her parents taught them. They all needed to be able to fend for themselves. Each member of the family packed their own head-for-the-hills bags. Food rations, weapons, thermal blankets – these were the kinds of things they put in their bags for the escape, if and when it would be necessary. As a small child, Tara took her bag with her to bed at night. She understood from what her parents taught her that it could happen any time of the day or night, that they must be alert, be […]
Continue readingMore TagRemembrance
Matthew 5:1-12 As we moved toward this day of remembrance, 2020, I did a little personal remembrance, looking back on this year. Where have we come from in 2020? About a year ago, in the last couple of months of 2019, I was feeling a sort of restlessness, a sense that something was burgeoning, getting ready to be born. As the world turned to a new calendar year, I felt there was light right around the corner. I remembered that way back in the beginning of this year I was very conscious of what 2020 means to us. 2020 is perfect vision. I began this year thinking about that and with the intention of making 2020 a year of seeing clearly. To me this meant a kind of spiritual clarity. I was drawn to the idea of seeing where and what God is calling us to. What is God drawing […]
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