The Pity of Little Love
Courtesy of The Guardian We’ve gotten used to reports of Islamists attacking non-Muslim infidels. But I also read of Sunnis killing Shiites. 65 killed, 175 injured, lots of women and children, were just blasted by remote control in a crowded marketplace in northern Pakistan. And the inter-Muslim killing goes on in Iraq and Afghanistan. The extremists don’t just hate non-Muslims. They hate anyone who doesn’t adhere to their brand of it. It reminds me of years past when the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland were killing each other, but never in such large numbers and not so incessantly. They…
Praying for Rain
We may pray for something but not be happy when we get an answer. Praying for Rain The sky stretched a deep blue from horizon to horizon. Not a cloud. Just blue sky and the sun. Farm fields don’t do well with only sun. The fields of the Smiths, the Joneses, the Andersons, and the McCoys got more dried, cracked, and dusty every day. One night they all got together. “You know,” Smith said in his oversized bib overalls, “we’re goin’ to lose all our crops.” “We gotta do somethin’,” McCoy muttered, his round face contorting behind a handlebar…
The Ultimate Final Act
courtesy of LA Times A story almost forgotten: on February 3, 1943, four military chaplains were aboard a troop transport ship crossing the North Atlantic. Struck by a German submarine’s torpedo, the ship sank in the middle of the night. These four men led the new, unprepared recruits, to life jackets. Then the life jackets ran out. So without hesitating, the chaplains each gave up their own to give to another man. It is said they linked their arms in prayer as the ship went down into the frigid waters and then sucked them under in the vortex. The man…
Mama Goat and Billy Goat
Faith to trust God through hardship. Mama Goat and Billy Goat Billy Goat followed Mama Goat down the road. Mama Goat looked back. “Billy Goat, follow me, and we’ll go to a big field where the grass is tall and green! To get there we have to climb the hill in front of us.” Billy Goat looked up at the steep hill. A narrow path wound back and forth, sometimes disappearing behind boulders, and sometimes disappearing altogether in its precipitous ascent. “Do you really expect me to go up there?” “Yes, I do. Follow me, and watch where I…
Christianity Survives the Church
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles has been rocking with revealed coverups of priests’ sexual toward kids for decades past. The justifications that priests, bishops, and this cardinal make are astonishing. How can they defend themselves as church leaders and callously disregard the countless people whose lives they’ve ravaged? I tell my church history students it’s amazing that throught the institutional corruption of the Middle Ages, it’s amazing that Christianity survived the church. The same is still true. When people ask me what I think it will take for the church to grow in contemporary America, I say that the…
