Spring Magazine: "How Could He?"

You never get used to it. War, AIDS, Darfur...starvation, suffering, persecution, sickness, death. You never get used to it.

I've been doing this for a lot of years. I've cleaned up after more suicides, buried more babies, stood by more deathbeds and watched the pain of more people than I can even remember. And each time it's fresh and horrible.

I remember when my father died of cancer, when my kid brother suddenly died at such a young age, and when my wife Anna and I nursed my dying mother in her final days, doing things for her that a son never thinks he will have to do. I remember the kind people from Hospice and the friends who tried to help, but could do very little.

You don't get used to it. You never get used to it.

Read more...

Christmas Magazine: "Good for Goodness Sake"

Almost everything of any importance is found on the way to somewhere else. If you want to be accepted, seek it and you will never find it. If you want to be spiritual, work hard at it, and your lack of spirituality will rival that of a pagan. If you want humility and work at it, your pride will become your most outstanding trait.

Nowhere is this major life principle more apparent than in the connection between prayer and goodness. God didn't design prayer so that you would get better, even though you will. God didn't design prayer so you would be holy, even though that does happen. God didn't design prayer to make you more like Jesus, even though that is its by-product. God designed prayer-and get this straight-because he likes you and wants to spend time with you. How about that, sports fans? God loves us so much that he went to a lot of trouble just to spend time with us. God's passion really is unreasonable. I've never understood it. God created the world so we could know him.

But prayer does change us...

Read more...

Spring Magazine: "Something Is Missing..."

Of late I have found something most of us, myself included, have missed: the laughter which comes from the freedom Christ gives us...laughter for those whom the good news has not been very good news for a long time.

Read more...

Spring Magazine: "Bury The Past"

Isn't it funny how an incident--the unexpected meeting of an old friend, a song, a particular smell or a letter--will trigger memories? It's sort of like opening a door to a room you haven't visited for a long time. You look at one thing, then another, and another. Pretty soon you're lost among all the memories that room recalls.

Read more...