WATER
A hot day. The tar bubbles up in the pavement. The children run out side, role out a long yellow strip of plastic on the ground, attach it to the garden hose, open up the valve and water sprays out everywhere. They spend the afternoon sliding back and forth on the slip and slide, beating […]
LANGUAGE CLASS
Have you ever been blessed? Think about it. Have you ever been a blessing to someone else? Think about that! Who are these people who bring blessing? What is this language of blessing? Why did Abram have to up and leave everything he knew, set out into the unknown, in order […]
SNAKES
If you spend anytime in the woods, you will end up spending time with snakes. Some of those snakes will be poisonous, like copper heads or cane break rattlers. I’ve had my own run-ins. One time having to share a rock in the sun with a copper head, and another time having to wait […]
A WASTE OF TIME
The ashes of wasted love. Burning up something that is precious and priceless. The wreckage of the love of which we are capable. Wasting the gift of being alive. Sin. Today it is quite literally rubbed in our faces. The ashes are brand new, I just burned up the palm fronds from last years […]
DOWN THE MOUNTAIN
Going up hill takes some work. Whether it is a train going up the Saluda Grade, or an 18 wheeler going up hwy 25, or a bicycle going up through the Greenville Reservoir, or a person on foot climbing the Jocassee gorge, going up hill takes work. Pushing it down into low gear, the engine […]
FULFILLED-FILLEDFULL
Sometimes I go on long hikes. One time I went on an 11 day solo hike. It was on a trail that I had wanted to hike for 20 years and I finally did it. I came limping up out of the woods at the end of that hike, into an almost empty park in […]
WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
“What are you looking for?” “Tell me something good.” What are you looking for? Make me feel good. I’m tired of feeling bad. What are you looking for? I want to live. What are you looking for? I am ready to die. What are you looking for? My children are starving. […]
UP FROM THE WATER
It is very quite. The day is just waking up. That silence when the morning light first starts softly sifting through the darkness, long before the sun comes up. A cool mist is rising from the ground, and from the water of the lake. An old wooden dock wanders out over the water. […]
TIME IS SHORT…
Tic, toc, tic, toc time is passing. I am neurotic. Clicking and ticking and clunking sounds drive me crazy. I think it started when I was elementary school, I’d sit in the kitchen doing my home work, and we had this clock on the wall that we bought with green stamps from the grocery store. […]
FULLNESS
The way up is down. Fullness is found in emptiness. Such is the stuff that life in the Spirit is made of. These seeming contradictions and paradoxes draw us into the mystery of love and the very heart of God. Today is Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday of the […]
PEACABLE KINGDOM
I used to wander around a lot when I was growing up. Today we keep a short leash on our children. We keep them locked up most of the time. Though statistically things are arguably safer, we are heavily marketed to by fear, it is a big seller. A few months ago I ran […]
REMEMBER
“Moving house.” Now that is a phrase that causes the heart to skip a beat. “Moving house.” We have been moving house lately and I keep finding things with memories attached to them. In our shed I found an old tea saucer that I had used to hold my keys and spare change […]
STUDY IN CONTRAST
How do we see? Really see? How do we notice the details of something that holds out attention? Part of what makes a good photograph or painting is the use of light and shadow, of contrast. I have all these overexposed and underexposed photographs that I took as a child, that are interesting, but […]
THE FAITH THAT SAVES
Have you ever had a prayer answered? Have you ever cried out for mercy? For help? And received it? It can be a humbling and overwhelming experience. Have you ever had a prayer go unanswered? Have you ever cried out for mercy? For Help? Only to receive silence and darkness? Or to outright […]
PLANTED IN THE SEA
The horse drawn carriage comes to the end of the road, at a river, a swollen river where there should be a bridge. There is no way across. They stand there looking at the water, they have no idea what to do. The grandmother, steps out of the wagon walks to the waters edge, has […]
SHREWD
I love a good story. Especially stories about being clever, or tricky or shrewd. Often those kinds of stories are stories about survival, like Robinson Crusoe, or Swiss Family Robinson, or more recently the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away. They are great stories because the characters survive because they choose to survive, rather than […]
REJOICE WITH ME
A woman sweeps a room, finds the coin she lost, equal to the wages of a days labor. She invites all her friends over to celebrate. An image of God: a woman sweeping the floor who throws a party. How often do we picture God like that? Lighting the lamp, sweeping every nook and cranny, […]
CREATION/JUDGMENT/SALVATION
Jeremiah was seeing double. God had knocked him upside the head and he couldn’t see straight after that. Everything he saw and did was two things at once. One was just plain old ordinary every day kind of things, like a piece of pottery, or a handful of wet clay in the potters hand, spinning […]
WILD GRAPES
So we begin. We begin with a love song. We begin with lovers, whose love for one another is a fruitful garden, a vineyard. Until…until what? Something changes. The love song ends, the garden goes wild and weed choked, the grapes go sour. The shaky romance between God and God’s people. We start with […]
SAME OLE STORY
High noon. A vulture flies by overhead calling out a harsh and throaty welcome. The bad guy, his eyes squinting in the sunlight, walks out onto the land, the crunch of gravel under his feet. The land is his. He took it from someone who was in his way, a little person, who won’t be […]
A CODE TO LIVE BY
“You who are on the road must have a code that you can live by.” That is the opening line of a 1970 song by Crosby, Stills and Nash. Not that I remember back that far. It was 20 years later that I heard it and started wondering about a code to live by, […]
Anna Elizabeth Kovaz Burial
Remembering a life, a life that was not long enough, cut short. leaving behind gaping hole, a ragged tear, where a life used to be, a life with so much ahead. An empty place where there should be an over flowing cup. A place of grief, pain, sadness. The Christian Gospel really doesn’t […]
Independence Day/ Grow up day
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the […]
VOCATION
Grandfather! Grandfather! Tell us a story! Tell us a story about Elijah the Tishbite, the prophet of God! Tell us a story! So children, you wish to hear another story about Elijah the Tishbite, the prophet of God do you? Yes, did we not just tell you that very thing? Why do you always ask […]