Easy is not usually God's way

-
"It is easier to talk about a person than to help a person. It's easier to debate homosexuality than to be a friend to a gay person. It's easier to discuss divorce than to help the divorced. It's easier to argue abortion, than to support an orphanage. It's easier to complain about the welfare system than to help the poor." -Max Lucado

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monkey Bars

-
Image
     I was talking with my wife's father, a retired pastor, and he told me about an image he used in many of his sermons throughout the years.  It is a thing that every kid learns on the monkey bars on the playground at school.  It is simply this: when you are on the monkey bars, you can't move forward until you let the hand behind you let go of the last bar.      In this way, I am kind of stuck in my life.  The trailing monkey bar is my smoking cigarettes.  I just haven't been able to let go of that bar no matter how hard I try.  I believe that this bar gives me a lift.  You see, I suffer from a chronic depression.  When I go outside and have a smoke and a caffeinated beverage, I get a little boost to my mood.  Often this gets me back on track and I start doing things besides laying in bed.  I might do the dishes and I feel better about what I have accomplished.  I might, being awake ...
Read more of this post »

A Letter To a Friend

-
Image
I woke up at 9:00 this morning, threw some clothes on and headed out the door.  I was meeting with the a ministry leader at 9:20 that morning because I had expressed an interest in joining their care ministry at my new church. Just before I left, I sent him a letter that I had written that week for a young man who I had visited in the adolescent psych unit at the hospital.  I thought it would give the ministry leader some insight into my interactions with my care receivers, as I had been a Stephen Minister for 5 years and a lay chaplain at my previous church. When I got there, I sat down with the ministry leader.  We got to talking and I asked him what he did for work previously.  He said he was a pharmacist.  Then he said something that perked my ears: He said his first rotation was for a Psychiatric Hospital in Ohio.  He said there was razor wire around the high wall surrounding it and double locked doors on every ward.  I asked him if it was for peo...
Read more of this post »

Loneliness and the Opposite - an Inward Life of Solitude

-
Image
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not.  In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post office (modern readers could read Facebook, instagram or twitter or email).  You may depend on it, that the poor fellow who walks away with the greatest number of letters (read likes or reads or emails) proud of his extensive correspondence has not heard from himself in a long while." I am reading a book about solitude, hospitality, and prayer by Henri Nouwen called "Reaching Out" and two other books including Walden by Henry David Thoreau.  Walden keeps coming up in all the books I have read lately, ...
Read more of this post »