Prairie Pastoral

March 15, 2022 | Leave a Comment

A good pillow

The fine old saying goes like this: “A clear conscience is a good pillow.”

No one’s quite sure where the saying came from. Sometimes you’ll hear it as, “A clean conscience is agood pillow” or “There is no pillow as soft as a clear conscience.” Some people believe it’s French, others German, and others African. The fact that it can be traced to so many sources speaks to its universal truth: A clear conscience is one free of guilt, and guilt makes the peace of a good night’s sleep pretty tough.

Paul’s two letters to Timothy speak to the matter of conscience and the state in which we may find ours: clear, clean, or “seared.” Both letters are addressed to Timothy as his “true child in the faith” (1 Timothy 1:2), but Paul’s words extend to the churches to which Timothy ministers. The churches are [Read more…]

February 18, 2022 | Leave a Comment

Business as usual?

Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades or if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you” (Matthew 11:20-24).

Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum: What had they done to deserve such reproach? What had they done to earn such a curse?

Nothing. They’d done nothing. And that was the point. In the words of the old King James, “…they repented not” (11:20).

Our great grand-daddy of Presbyterians, John Calvin, in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, named their indifference was the sin of ingratitude. It was, he wrote, “As if there had never been poured upon it a drop of Divine grace.” The punishment would be greater “in proportion to the higher favors which it had received from God” (https://www.ccel.org/study/Matt_11:22-11:24).

Simply put, the miracles dazzled their eyes, but didn’t change their hearts. Jesus wasn’t a Messiah to them; he was a magician, nothing more. Their hearts weren’t changed. They didn’t turn their lives around. That’s what “repent” means, after all. “To turn around.” To turn from the old and embrace the new. To turn from sin and choose virtue instead. To turn from death and rejoice in new life.

But, u-turns are hard to make some times…for lots of reasons. Even when you’ve had that heart stopping moment of God’s presence wrapped around you, [Read more…]

January 19, 2022 | Leave a Comment

Walking through mud: thoughts on another pandemic winter

Some days are like walking through mud: slow, heavy footed, and messy. This winter is like walking through mud.

Quarantine, test, isolation. Isolation, test, freedom (for a while). Someone else tests. Quarantine again. Test again. Cancel plans again. Again and again and again. And again and again and again.

We’re walking through mud.

I’ve had two remarkable–and unpleasant–experiences literally walking through mud. I’m trying hard to remember them and what I learned from them.

Here goes–

In 2011, our family spent a week in Lake City on the banks of Lake San Cristobal, which was formed by Slumgullion Slide, an earthflow (or rather a couple of earthflows) that cap the lake’s northeast side (here). It’s mud like you have never experienced mud, mud that didn’t wash off, mud that clung to us like the theme song of a sitcom from 1986.

My kids loved it. They ran, they played, they dug, they buried each other. They could, because they were young and, well, lightweight.

[Read more…]

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