God of Grace and God of Glory

God of grace and God of glory, on thy people pour thy power;
Crown thy ancient Church's story; Bring her bud to glorious flower.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the facing of this hour,
For the facing of this hour.

Lo! the hosts of evil round us scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!
Fears and doubts too long have bound us; Free our hearts to work and praise.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of these days,
For the living of these days.

Cure thy children's warring madness, bend our pride to thy control.
Shame our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage lest we miss thy kingdom's goal,
Lest we miss thy kingdom's goal.

Set our feet on lofty places; gird our lives that they may be
Armored with all Christ-like graces in the fight to set men free.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage that we fail not man nor thee,
That we fail not man nor thee.

Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore.
Let the search for thy salvation be our glory evermore.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage serving thee whom we adore,
Serving thee whom we adore.

Amen.

Words by Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1878-1969
Published in The Methodist Hymnal, 1964 edition.

To read or hear the sermon that inspired this post, click here.

Gracism in Georgia

It was a beautiful service Sunday at North Decatur United Methodist Church. A baby girl, backed by a huge entourage of family and friends, was baptized. A beaming Pastor Dalton Rushing tenderly carried her up and down the aisles as the whole congregation sang a sweet lullaby to her:

Caroline, Caroline, God claims you, God helps you, protects you, and loves you too.
We this day do all agree a child of God you'll always be. 
Caroline, Caroline, God claims you, God helps you, protects you, and loves you too.
We your family love you so, we vow to help your faith to grow.
Caroline, Caroline, God claims you, God helps you, protects you, and loves you too.
We are here to say this day that we will help you on your way.
Caroline, Caroline, God claims you, God helps you, protects you, and loves you too.
And if you should tire or cry, then we will sing this lullaby.
Caroline, Caroline, God claims you, God helps you, protects you, and loves you too.

I'm new to the Methodist tradition, so I don't know if this is standard baptism procedure. Regardless, it was beautiful and touching.

After the service ended, I walked through the narthex to say hello to the pastor in the open doorway before heading home. Dalton said he had a book for me and asked me to wait a few minutes while he finished greeting folks, so I stepped out onto the church's large concrete porch in the autumn warmth.

A tall, well-presented young man was standing just behind and to Dalton's left on the porch. The young man immediately greeted me with a firm handshake and a smile and introduced himself as George. He was clean-shaven, had a conservative but attractive haircut under a navy blue ball cap, and flashed a set of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. He was impressive. I guessed he was in his early 20s.

We exchanged polite small talk as people continued to file out of the church. Because I am new to this church and still haven't met many people, I asked George if he attended there regularly.

"No sir," he responded earnestly. "Actually, I'm homeless and I was waiting right over there for the bus, but I needed to use the bathroom so I came into the church."

I tried not to look as stunned as I felt as he continued his matter-of-fact description of his day so far:

Every time a bell rings ...

The other day I stated on Facebook that I was having a George Bailey moment. My good friend Mary Beth astutely asked, "Before or after he discovers the bloody lip?" "Right about then," was my reply.

Let me explain.

Ever since I was about 12 years old, I have suffered periodic bouts of depression. It was never diagnosed until I was in my 30s. Toward the end of 2009 it came back with a vengeance, and I've been praying, working and medicating to fight it off ever since. 

They say that significant life events can trigger depressive episodes, and like anyone, I'd had my share of those in recent times: a job change; a big move; a serious health scare; the death of a close friend; the sickness and death of my father-in-law; the death of a pet; a separation from my beloved goddaughter; a difficult relationship with a supervisor; witnessing a series of disasters. Any one or two of these would have been plenty, thank you. 

Many of those things just have to be grieved, and that is simply a function of time and allowing yourself to feel your feelings. (The best thing anyone said to me after my mother died in 1998 came from my close friend Tony, who said, "Just feel what you feel, man. Feel what you feel.")

© Liberty Films

It can be helpful to write a letter to the lost person or thing, sharing everything you feel, good, bad or neutral. Read the letter out loud to another person, someone you trust and who won't comment or judge, but just listen. If you don't have such a person, a pet or a teddy bear will do.

It's a hard life being at once a Christian, an optimist, a liberal and a journalist. You want to see and hope for the best in people and society, but the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. You trust in a loving and benevolent God, but you witness daily a corrupt and hateful world. You feel strongly motivated to reach out and help "the least of these," but the sheer quantity of them is paralyzing.

War, crime, cruelty, hatred, selfishness, greed, wastefulness, irresponsibility -- all of these are failings of humanity and are to be expected because we are a fallen race. That doesn't mean we have to like them, or accept them, or even overcome them. One thing we can do is pray for humanity, pray that the light of God's love will drive out the darkness of the world. It's frustrating to realize that this change has to happen one soul at a time.

A culture of unforgiveness

Why can't we forgive in this country? And why, if we brag that this is such a great country, don't we believe in one of the things that set it apart: our justice system?

We live in an age of hatred, rage and unforgiveness, and I believe this attitude holds us back as a society and as a nation.

We're all human. We all make mistakes. We all screw up. We all hurt someone sometime. And a few of us commit crimes.

We have a system in this country wherein a person who commits a crime is tried in public by a presumably impartial jury; if the person is convicted, he or she receives punishment proportionate to the crime, according to law. When the sentence is completed, the convicted person can go on with his or her life.

But that doesn't seem to be good enough for an awful lot of people. At a gut level, they want more. They want blood. And they never, ever want someone who has committed a crime to stop suffering consequences for it.

Look at Michael Vick. I'm not a big fan of pro football, and I don't think athletes or celebrities deserve any special treatment. I also am an animal lover. I cry at those Sarah McLaughlin Humane Society commercials.

What Vick did was horrible and disgusting. Dogfighting is vile, ugly and inhumane. I believe it offends God.

But we have laws to deal with dogfighting, and Vick was tried and punished according to those laws. He admitted his guilt, he did his time, and he paid his debt to society -- a debt that society (that's you and me) determined.

So why doesn't that settle it? Why can't people accept a "Paid in Full" stamp on Vick's rap sheet? Why do they want him banned from the NFL, banned from society, banned from making a living for the rest of his life?

Why are the provisions of the law not good enough for people who are mad at someone for breaking the law? It's as if we agree to sell someone a car for $5,000, they pay the $5,000, and after they've driven off we tell everyone they stole the car from us. "No, what I meant was I wanted them to pay me $5,000 every day for the rest of their life."

Many, if not most, companies won't hire anyone with a felony record, even if that person has fulfilled all the court's requirements for punishment and compensation. A former boss of mine once cackled over a job application on which the applicant checked "Yes" in response to the question "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" "This guy is too stupid to get a job," the boss told me. I guess he would have preferred for the applicant to lie.

Even when the offense doesn't rise to the level of lawbreaking, no response by the offender ever seems adequate for the offended.

Someone says something offensive or does something unethical and is called on it. The offender realizes his or her error and offers a sincere, specific, public apology. The person might also be fired or resign. "Not good enough!" the offended party cries.

What exactly do you want? You want the person who offended you to be totally abased, to be publicly humiliated, to lose everything he owns, to never have an opportunity to gain it back, and, ultimately, to die by stoning, followed by the body being burned in the public square. There. Satisfied?

Is that the American way? It certainly isn't Christ's way.

We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Those of us who have accepted Jesus as our savior have received eternal forgiveness for all our sins -- past present and future, no matter how heinous. By Christ's death on the cross, our debt is paid in full. How then can we who have been forgiven of so much be so unforgiving? How can we who enjoy such abundant grace offer no grace to our neighbors who are just like us?

Punishment has to fit the crime. Penalties have to have limits. At some point the creditor has to stamp the promissory note "Paid in Full." Refusal to do so places the unforgiving creditor in a position of superiority to God, a sin far greater than the original offense. How dare the forgiven not forgive?

Is there not a cause?

My brilliant pastor, Jentezen Franklin, this morning preached on the subject, "You need to get free of 'What's in it for me?'" He used the passage in 1 Samuel 17 where David's brothers and other men tell David what rewards would be given to the man who slays Goliath.

These guys were all focused on the prizes -- great riches, the king's daughter in marriage, and tax-free living for life. But all that talk didn't sit well with David, who said, "Is there not a cause?"

By that David meant there was a better reason than personal rewards to go after Goliath. This thug was insulting their God and everyone who believed in him. What more incentive did they need?

My pastor then lit into preachers who do things not for the glory of God and furtherance of his kingdom, but for self-aggrandizement and income opportunities. Then he turned it onto the rest of us, saying the cause of God's kingdom should be enough motivation to get us to serve others; we shouldn't need any other incentives, such as payment, recognition or fame. Amen and amen.

He kept repeating the line, "You need to get free of 'What's in it for me?'" And it got me thinking about the health-care town hall screamers and the current crop of conservatives in general. (By the way, Franklin himself is clearly pretty conservative, so this message surprised me a little, but he didn't take it where I'm about to.)

This very morning on the way to church I had been saying to My Lovely Wife that the theme of these protests makes me sick. I saw on TV a woman with a look of disgust say of President Obama's proposed plan, "It takes away from those who have been paying for health care for years [and] reduces our health care so that everyone else can have it."

Yes, and isn't that horrible? I mean, I got mine, so SCREW everybody else! Am I my brother's keeper? Why should I be expected to give up a tiny fraction of the abundance that I have so that my neighbor who has nothing might have something?

I've never really been able to put my finger on what it is about conservatives that nettles me so much, but this is it exactly: They go on and on about how great America is, America love it or leave it, God bless America, but they're not willing to give anything up to help their fellow Americans. Anyone who suggests Americans pool their resources to help out the least of these is decried as a SOCIALIST!

I wonder if any of them have ever read the last four verses of the second chapter of Acts. The first Christians were total pinkos.

I voted for Obama in the primary election, but I liked Hillary Clinton's health-care reform plan better. So I'm not suggesting everyone should just go for Obama's plan; it definitely needs work. What I am saying is that it appalls me that people think it's OK to let their fellow Americans -- even children -- go without health care.

Believe it or not, I actually liked George W. Bush for a minute when he was running for president in 2000. That line about ushering in an era of "compassionate conservatism" got my attention. But those words turned out to be not only a lie, but an oxymoron. In today's American politics, conservatism is by definition the opposite of compassionate. It is service only to oneself, regardless of the cost to others.

What's in it for me? How about a better night's sleep knowing some child won't die because her parents' insurance company didn't want to pay for a liver transplant? How about fewer people hitting you up for money while you're walking downtown because medical bills will no longer drive anyone into homelessness? How about the avoidance of a rebuke at the Judgment Seat of Christ when he says, "Inasmuch as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me."

Revelation led

We have a lot of electronic billboards around here, the ones that look like giant TV screens and change the ad every few seconds.

One near the Georgia Dome in Atlanta is owned by a company called Revelation LED, which promotes itself on a couple of the panels in the rotation.

The first time I saw the promo's big, bold logo -- REVELATION|LED -- I thought it was an ad for some church. I chuckled when I realized my mistake, but I thought, "What a great slogan that would be for a church: REVELATION LED."

It reminds me of a quote by Israel Houghton on his "New Season" CD (my favorite Christian album):

"Seasons are not governed by clocks and calendars. Seasons are governed by revelation and truth."

It's a great line in a great monologue that gets my blood pumping every time. Hear it for yourself in context in the following file. The monologue follows the song, which is quite beautiful and was co-written by Free Chapel's worship leader, Ricardo Sanchez. The monologue begins at 6:18 of the clip.

Kingdom Coaches

I saw a tour bus today with the name Kingdom Coach emblazoned on the sides and back. I like that name -- not necessarily for a bus company, but as a title for a person, a spiritual guide.

Two of my kingdom coaches are hurting right now. C.David, an inexhaustible font of encouragement and optimism, is mending rapidly from extensive surgery to remove a tumor in his belly; now he's learned he's going to need two chemotherapy treatments a week for six months. Sister Dorothy, who seems to have committed the entire Bible to memory and always calls up the perfect verse to address any concern, is in severe pain from a vascular problem in her feet.

God, please bless both of these my coaches, as well as all the others. They've helped you make me into the player I am today.

Let's learn from Lincoln

As Inauguration Day nears and we enter an era of new leadership, let those whose candidates lost and those whose candidates won in the recent election be reconciled. In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president (and a Republican!) said this during a time of civil war:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

God bless Barack Obama, God bless those who disagree with him, and God bless America and the world it seeks to lead by example.

(Photo swiped from http://www.dirtwrites.blogspot.com )

Women begetting badly

Matthew's genealogy of Jesus covers forty-and-two generations, but it mentions just five women -- and only four by name. The interesting and fun thing is that every one of those women was scandalous in some way.

Tamar had been married to Judah's son Er, but Er died. According to Hebrew custom, Er's brother Onan was supposed to take on Tamar as his wife to provide offspring for his late brother, but he failed to fulfill his duty. (Onan "wasted his seed on the ground," meaning he pulled out so Tamar wouldn't get pregnant; it is misunderstanding of this Scripture that has led many Christians to condemn masturbation, which in fact has nothing to do with this.)

As Tamar's father-in-law, it was Judah's duty to provide a man to help her conceive, but he reneged. So, Tamar tricked Judah into fulfilling this duty by disguising herself as a prostitute and getting him to sleep with her. When Tamar, no longer disguised, was found to be pregnant, Judah tried to have her burned at the stake. However, Tamar turned the tables by proving that Judah was the father, exposing him as a john and as a man who failed to fulfill his word or his duty.

Judah -- a son of Jacob and patriarch of the largest of the Twelve Tribes of Israel -- admitted in front of everyone, "She is more righteous than I." Tamar gave birth to twins, one of whom was Jesus' ancestor Perez.

Rahab was the mother of Boaz and great-grandmother of David, the greatest king Israel would have and a figure who in many ways was a precursor of Jesus. She was also a prostitute, but she helped the spies who scouted out the town of Jericho for Joshua.

Rahab's son Boaz married Ruth, who was not a Hebrew. She was a minority, a foreigner, a member of a different race, so to speak, but she became David's grandmother.

Next in line is a woman whom Matthew calls "Uriah's wife." Her name was Bathsheba, and David had a one-night stand with her while Uriah was off fighting a war for him. David married her after having Uriah killed. She eventually gave birth to Solomon, who succeeded David as king and was one of Jesus' forefathers.

The last scandalous woman on the list is a girl named Mary, who was an unwed teenage mother whose fiance knew he wasn't the father. Her fiance, Joseph, "desired to put her away secretly." However, an angel of the Lord let Joseph know that Mary had conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, so he stuck with her.

And, as Jentezen Franklin said, Mary had a little Lamb.

Every one of these women was at the center of a scandal, every one a subject of gossip. And every one is in the bloodline of Jesus, the Son of God and Savior of the world.

God esteems -- and redeems -- scandalous women.

Claim and proclaim

You may remember a series of posts I wrote in February and March about healing. The focus then was mainly on physical healing, but the principles apply to all kinds of healing, including emotional and relational.

The second part of the series was based on the passage in the Gospel of Luke about the woman with "an issue of blood" and how she received healing by pushing through the crowd to get to the source of healing, Jesus. And he so overflows with healing that all it took for her was to touch the edge of the back of his garment.

I love the last part of the story, as told by Luke:

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

This passage is so loaded with messages, I'll have to go a phrase at a time. Pay attention now; this is for you.

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed,

This woman had tried to disappear into the crowd, but Jesus easily singled her out as the one among the many. She had been shunned by the crowd because of her problem, but now she was trying to blend in.

How many times have you found yourself alone in the midst of a crowd, surrounded by dozens or even thousands of people, not one of whom knows you or understands your pain? One place where it happens to a lot of people is in church. You show up on Sunday, dressed in your finest clothes and burdened with your darkest secrets, and just hope no one notices you or discovers your uncleanness. Most of the crowd won't take any note of you because they're too busy worrying that someone will notice them and discover their uncleanness. Or they're just there to find a mate or to see the spectacle or to kill a couple of hours on a slow weekend.

But Jesus notices us. We can't avoid him or evade him. He sees that monkey on your back, that baggage in your hand, that cloud over your head. And he knows why you're really there.

... came trembling and fell at his feet.

This woman had spent years in forced isolation, totally shunned by society – particularly by the rigid religious types. The society and the sanctimonious had no sympathy for her, only revulsion and rejection and condemnation. But now at last she had found someone who had compassion for her, and who had already healed her.

So she did the only two things she could do: She surrendered and she worshipped.

Those are a couple of tough things for us -- any of us, but especially us Americans (and particularly us of the male persuasion) -- to do. We're so self-sufficient and self-actualized and self-reliant and self-centered and self-worshiping that we find it very difficult or indeed impossible to acknowledge a force greater than our will, much less submit to it.

But let's face it: Surrender and worship are the only appropriate responses to an encounter with Jesus. Compared to him we are nothing, and to pretend otherwise is not only blasphemous, it's downright ridiculous. Your refusal to worship at the feet of Jesus is like a little poodle yapping at a Great Dane; to anyone with any perspective it's just silly.

So quit yapping and worship the God who stands before you.

In the presence of all the people,

Not in reverent silence, not in her private prayer closet, not anonymously over the phone. In the presence of ALL the people. Yes, those people. The people who had condemned her and rejected her and recoiled from her. The people who didn't have what she had. The people whose faith and commitment were not sufficient to draw Jesus' attention. In the presence of those people,

she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed.

The sister testified. She told the story of how she got over. She said she wasn't gonna talk about it but she couldn't keep it to herself. It was like fire shut up in her bones.

When you find a good dentist or a good pediatrician or a good barber, don't you tell everyone you know about it? When you receive a healing from the Good Shepherd, should you do any less? Shouldn't you tell everybody about it, so they can get in on the action too? You're not ashamed to refer someone to your car salesman; why are you ashamed to refer them to your Healer and Redeemer?

She told why she had touched him. She acknowledged her uncleanness before all the people, and she was not ashamed. She was not ashamed, because there was a second clause in that sentence: "how she had been instantly healed." Jesus had taken away her reproach, and now there was no condemnation. She could speak freely of it because now, thanks to the healing power of Jesus, she was free of it.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! I'm free at last!

Then he said to her, "Daughter, ..."

Daughter. ... My child. ... My flesh and blood. ... My baby. ... Possessor of my heritage and bearer of my future. Now you are all this. You used to be all that -- dirty, unwanted, untouchable, unclean -- but now you are all this. What a remarkable, miraculous, sudden reversal. But how?

"Your faith has healed you."

Notice that Jesus doesn't take credit for what had just happened. It happened because of her action, driven by her faith. She reached out to him because she believed. He didn't do anything but show up. He didn't wave his hand or utter a prayer or lay his hands on her. Heck, he wasn't even facing her when she reached out and grabbed the healing that was there waiting for her.

It was available to her as long as she was willing to push through that hostile, disapproving, sanctimonious, celebrity-mad, profane, faith-challenged crowd, which represents the world and the church. She said, "I don't care what they all think about me or believe about him, I'm going to reach out and claim my healing."

Are you ready to claim your healing today? Are you determined enough to fight your way through the obstructing crowd and get close enough to Jesus to receive his readily available healing? Are you prepared to surrender your ego and your pride and your failed efforts to fix things yourself? Are you ready to worship at the feet of the Great Physician and admit and declare that he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? If you will do these simple things, then and only then will you be able to do as this woman did:

Go in peace.

Oh! Beautiful!

No disrespect to Mr. Ray Charles, but holy mama! His version of this song never left me stunned the way this one, by Donna McElroy of the Berklee School, did:



Here's hoping you have a safe, happy, blessed and grateful Day of Giving Thanks.

Love,
Jim

The Deacon is Freakin'

OK, this is pretty wild. We truly are made in the image and likeness of God. Watch this:

Give The Big Guy A Hand

How cool is this?

Family circles

Looking back, I realize I failed to follow up on a line of thought in a previous post, and that loop needs to be closed.

I said that despite my pastor's gentle encouragement, I didn't cry when my mom died.

For the record, that situation was rectified on the Sunday after the funeral, when the freakin' dam burst.

That same pastor, Dennis Butts, had come over and sat down next to me. He asked me if I remembered what he had told me earlier, that it was OK to cry. I told him I did remember, but that's just not the way my grief was coming out. He just sat there with me for a couple of minutes, neither one of us saying anything.

"It's OK to cry."

Pastor Butts is a big bear of a man at better than 6 feet tall and better than 200 pounds. He carries a large, quiet, powerful presence, much as my dad did. That presence began to overshadow me that day on the front pew -- enveloping me, drawing me in, surrounding me, subsuming me. I felt like I was inside a small, dark closet, in the deepest shadows behind the long winter coats. I felt safe.

That's when I absolutely lost it, sobbing inconsolably on that front pew for 20 minutes after the service ended.

I could hear people chatting, some stopping to ask MLW what was wrong with me, random people placing a hand on my shoulder or offering a word of comfort, and the tears and snot pouring out. Someone finally had the good sense and compassion to stuff a couple of tissues into my hand.

That day it became clearer to me than ever that I had a new family. It didn't replace my birth family but augmented it. I felt safe enough to cry like a baby in front of these people, and they responded with love, comfort, empathy and compassion.

Less than three weeks later, when my father also died, my tears were warmed up and ready to go, and go they did. My hysterical reaction at the hospital remains one of the more memorable entries in my family's grief scrapbook.

But it's all good. MLW and my sister Sheila stayed with me to comfort me while I was treated (read: sedated) in the emergency room, and no one made fun of me when we eventually made it back to the house, where we sat around the dining room table in stunned disbelief.

Both my families had their finest hours in the days and weeks that followed. My birth family, without exception, demonstrated kindness and grace to a degree that I had never seen in many of them before, and it helped heal some old wounds in me. My church family, which I already knew to be full of kindness and grace, proved generous and gentle as well, weeping and grieving with us, taking on themselves the loss of two people they had never known.

I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge as well the kindness of my co-workers, who sent stacks of cards and food and sent flowers to the funeral home and covered my extended absence from work without a word of complaint.

It's true that there's a lot of bad stuff and a lot of bad people in this world. But these moments and these memories remind me that God looks after his own:

A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy
dwelling.
God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with
singing;
... You gave abundant showers, O God;
You refreshed your weary inheritance. -- Psalm 68:5-6a;9

I apologize for writing so much about death and grief lately. It's a season the Spirit has sent me into, and I'm walking through it. Which reminds me of something another member of my church family, a man named Brother Herman, said a couple of years ago:

"Psalm 23 says, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ...'
Notice that it says 'walk through'; it doesn't say 'set up camp in.'"

Thanks for that, Brother Herman. Thanks to all my brothers and sisters. And thanks, God, for them.

Godfather's Day

OK, so today is Father's Day. Kind of a neutral day for me most years. My dad died 10 years ago, and I'm not a father myself, so ... pfftht.

This morning our church put on a lovely little sketch, playing out the Steven Curtis Chapman song "Cinderella" onstage. Here's the official Chapman video on YouTube:

Let's just say I was glad I stuffed a couple of tissues in my pocket before leaving for church this morning.

The pastor at my former church makes a point every year of telling people we shouldn't glibly go around and wish every man we see a happy Father's Day. For some it's a very painful day because they didn't have a father or because the father they had was a lout (or worse).



And then there are those who, like me, feel a sense of loss at never having become a father, at knowing we'll never experience the reality of that song.

This certainly isn't a matter for pity or self-pity, since the no-kids decision was one MLW and I made jointly and consciously. And our reasoning for the decision -- there are enough mouths to feed on this planet already -- still stands up.

Nevertheless, I still feel a certain emptiness at not having had (or taken) the opportunity to raise a child.

But here's the thing. God isn't limited by our decisions or our ideas of what a family is.

And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in
Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

At the beginning of May, my nephew and his wife and their three children -- who had started in Michigan, lived the last three years in Florida and the last five months in Marietta, Ga. -- moved into a house three blocks from ours. The youngest of those three children is a 7-year-old blue-eyed blonde named Savannah who is my godchild. And she is CRAZY about her godfather. And I'm pretty crazy about her, too.


God has given me my Cinderella.






Don't you just love a happy ending?

Take your healing

The Lord revealed something interesting to me this morning while I was doing my daily Bible reading.

When they [Jesus and his disciples] had crossed over [the Sea of Galilee], they landed at Gennesaret and anchored there. As soon as they got out of the boat, people recognized Jesus. They ran throughout that whole region and carried the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went – into villages, towns or countryside – they placed the sick in the marketplaces. They begged him to let them touch even the edge of his cloak, and all who touched him were healed. -- Mark 6:53-56

What jumped out at me was the last phrase: “... and all who touched him were healed.”

He didn’t touch them, they touched him.

He didn’t touch them, they touched him.

Jesus went to “the marketplaces” – public places where everyone went every day. No one had to look very hard to seek him out. He made himself available where anyone – in villages, towns and countryside – could find him.

Those who needed healing – and doesn’t everyone need healing of one kind or another? – came to him. And those who were too weak to get themselves there were “placed” there by other people who cared about them.

We often hear complaints that Jesus didn’t intervene in this or that situation, and often he doesn’t, for his own reasons that we are incapable of understanding.

We expect him to come to us, when what is needed is for us to come to him.

But I wonder how many times we miss blessings – how many times we don’t get healed – simply because we fail to reach out to him. We expect him to come to us, when what is needed is for us to come to him.

He isn’t hard to find. He makes himself available in all situations in all places at all times, out in the open. It’s up to us to go to him, to reach out to him and to take the healing. He carries the healing with him wherever he goes, but it takes action on our part, not his, for us to receive it.

All is well

In case you missed it ...

My doctors have given me a clean bill of health. Praise God! Thank you, Lord!

I already gave the news in the "James at 5:16" post below, but I realize now that the headline is a little vague and I buried the lede. Mea culpa. There's never a copy editor around when you need one.

The paint can results are in now as well, and everything came out fine there, too, so to speak.

(By the way, I'd love to see some comments on these posts. You don't have to sign in or join up to leave a comment. Just use the "Name/URL" option under Comments and write in any name you like. I'd like it best if I knew who you were, though. And while you're at it, feel free to click on any of the links you see on the site. They're risk-free, I promise.)

James at 5:16

"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous person is powerful and effective." -- James 5:16

My hematologist told me today that my bone marrow biopsy and related blood work showed no sign of cancer, no sign of myelodysplasia, no sign of developing leukemia or lymphoma. They also did a chromosomal study to see if there are any genetic precursors of cancer or other diseases, and there are none.

I got nothin'.

Give God praise for his exceeding grace and mercy, and while you're at it give yourself a pat on the back for sending up some powerful and effective prayer. I thank you from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my spirit.

For a person my age, the makeup of the bone marrow should be roughly 50 percent marrow cells of various types and 50 percent fat. Mine is more like 30-70, but Dr. Jay says that's nothing to be concerned about. The low lymphocyte numbers we've been seeing could have been caused by exposure to some unknown toxin sometime in my past, or I might simply be made that way, she said. Either way, it doesn't seem to be a problem.

The vitamin D deficiency noted in my previous post could indeed be the culprit in my weight loss, but it is not related to the white cells; it's just a coincidence that it happened at the same time, she said. Dr. Jay at first suggested I add a vitamin D supplement to my diet, but backed off that idea when she learned I have a history of kidney stones. She said she would get back to me with a plan for addressing that problem.

Just eat a healthy diet and exercise, she said. See you in three months.

Again, I thank each of you for your love and prayers and support during this worrisome time. I can now exhale and get on with my life, more determined than ever to redeem the time.

What's D problem?

My primary care doctor's office left me a message yesterday to inform me that my most recent blood test showed a vitamin D deficiency.

This could explain my weight loss; one of my sisters lost a frightening amount of weight several years ago, and it turned out to be a vitamin D issue. She's fine now, thank God.

Whether this could account for my missing white cells remains to be seen Monday, when I return to the hematologist for the results of my bone-marrow excavation.