A weed grows at the end of my driveway where it crosses the sidewalk into the street. One day it sprouts white flowers. It is small, and few if any people will notice it or care. But it’s beautiful–and stubbornly determined. It is completely surrounded and wedged in by slabs of concrete—not a good place to be planted, but it is. So it grows anyway in the little dirt it finds between the slabs and with the little water spared by the arid sky. As I take the photo, a friendly sheriff’s deputy stops…
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The materialism of Christmas shopping used to be tempered by carols of angels and the newborn Christ. But now that anything “religious” has been pervasively banned from stores, we’re reduced to hollow gibberish about Santa and happy holidays. What to say? An alternative to feeling angry or cynical or sad is to remember that the original holiday, the Roman Saturnalia, was a happy pagan holiday to begin with. And before that, Jesus wasn’t particularly welcomed in Israel either—Herod tried to kill him (with horrific collateral damage to baby boys around Bethlehem). If Jesus were so inclined, he might say to us something…
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I’m on the eastern shore of Kauai, and the waves are pounding. Big and scary. I venture out. If I stand facing them, they knock me back. If I stand sideways, I fare better just because spreading my legs perpendicular to them gives stability. If I don’t want to see or face the waves and stand with my back toward them, I fare the worst. They hit me without my knowing when they come, and they tumble me into the sand. Waves can be like the hardships, troubles, or bad surprises in life that scare us or destabilize us….
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For most of us reading this who live in the United States, we may sigh at the way so many things get so political. Seems a person can hardly say or do anything without someone else politicizing it and getting upset, or commenting on it. And we wonder, What have we come to? And where are we going? Our nation, or any nation, does not need more conservatives, and we certainly don’t need more liberals. Our nation needs more Kingdom of God People. Every nation does. Jesus’ entire life on earth is the best example of this. Yet at the…
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People naturally try to find meaning in the outcome of tragic events. Because finding meaning eases the pain of the tragedy. Absence or loss of meaning makes the pain unbearable. So we naturally go through inner turmoil when tragedy strikes or when life is unjust. Sometimes God seems way too quiet when we call out to him. Sometimes he seems absent. What do you do when God seems not to hear? It may help to know that natural disasters often result from the earth’s natural functioning: Earthquakes are necessary adjustments in the shifting of tectonic plates. Hurricanes are necessary atmospheric…
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