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September 29, 2020 | Leave a Comment

Frustration

(Adapted from a sermon preached September 6, 2020.)

Remember the movie Bruce Almighty, about the man whom God allows to be God just for a while? There’s a scene, early in the movie, in which Bruce is done, just done. He’s tired of his mediocre job, his mediocre apartment, his mediocre life, and he blames his mediocrity on God.

“God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass, and I’m the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if He wanted to, but He’d rather burn off my feelers and watch me squirm.”

Bruce may have not been altogether wrong. Bear with me.

This is a meditation on frustration. [Read more…]

July 16, 2020 | 2 Comments

Practicing caution in an age of fear

When my son was very young, he developed a fascination with electrical outlets.

Yes, yes, we used the outlet covers, and, yes, yes, inevitably, he’d find the one recently used outlet where we’d forgotten to replace the cover.

It all stopped, though, the night he decided to see what would happen if he put tweezers in the bathroom outlet where I’d just been drying my hair. After a loud crack and a scream, we found him on the other side of the room in a heap, unharmed, but wiser. He never went near another outlet again with small metal objects.

By trial and error, cracks and screams, it could be said that we learn what to fear and what not to fear.

The Savior Jesus teaches again and again to fear nothing. In Luke 12 alone, he teaches on fear three times. “I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that can do nothing more” (12:4), and again, “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life” (12:22), and again, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (v. 32).

But, my son needed to fear electrical outlets, didn’t he? Fear is good, isn’t it, if it keeps us safe?

No.

To fear something or someone is to give it power over us–at times, more power than God. Raw fear cripples us. It makes enemies of friends, and it rips neighbors apart. Raw fear makes us stupid. [Read more…]

April 17, 2019 | Leave a Comment

Wednesday of Holy Week: the promise of Easter dawn

It’s been a busy week of bad news. It happens sometimes. A friend texted to say she’s a bit overwhelmed by all the things happening at once. Fair enough.

But it’s Holy Week, and somehow that makes it more jarring. Or, somehow, it makes it more fitting. If ever we needed good news, it’s now, and we’re headed for it on Sunday morning. No circumstance of this day or any day will keep it from happening.

Easter will dawn. Jesus Christ is risen. He’s risen indeed.

And, as hard as that may be for our postmodern ears to hear, it’s the truth, and it’s not some idle, speculative, philosophical, theological, epistemological truth. It’s truth, personally and practically, for me and for you, because it’s not only truth. Truth is a means to an end. Faith, hope, and love abide. Truth is for the sake of faith, and of hope, and of love. It’s about God’s love in Jesus Christ, and we need it.

I’ve been reminding people, right and left, of that image we keep seeing of the empty cross over the rubble inside Notre Dame cathedral. “The cross rises above it all,” I keep texting and typing and saying. Yes. And yes, and yes.

To the tired, to the frightened, to the sick, to the grieving, to the wounded, to the aching, to the confused, to the unbeliever and believer alike: Gethsemane will happen, and so will Calvary. A week of bad news happened then too. But a dawn is promised, and an empty tomb. And all really shall be well.

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