Thursday Thought

The second most important book on your shelf.  What would that be?  When it comes to living a consistent Christian life, a world atlas might just be the second most important book on your shelf. Right next to your Bible, of course. Did my suggestion surprise you?  Give me a moment to explain. You see, there's a problem with our evangelical worldview.  For many of us, there's very little “world” in it.  While on paper, we agree to the urgency of what we call the “Great Commission,” most of us suffer from a great omission.  We simply do not know—or…

Hospitals.  They're no fun when you're sick—but remarkably instructive if you're healthy. Recently, my wife went into the hospital for kidney surgery.  So I spent four nights sleeping out in the waiting room, and countless hours observing.  I've come away with three lessons I'm trying to hang on to. Lesson #1: Everybody is hurting—from something. Hospitals, of course, are filled with the sick, the broken, the bleeding.  There isn't a hallway you walk down that doesn't offer some kind of evidence of intense personal pain.  Yet this is also true of life, itself. Everybody's hurting over something.  The problem for…

The Waldo Canyone Fire.  By the time it was finally put out last July more than 300 Colorado homes were destroyed.  One person was killed, with nearly half a billion dollars in damages.   Like any disaster, it's one thing to see it on the web…or watch it on your flat screen TV.  Quite another to be there. On a recent trip out west, my wife and I decided to visit the ruins.  The scent of burning is still in the air, months after the last of the flames were silenced. What we saw was beyond sobering.  Block after block…

Last night I dreamed a horrible dream.  It has haunted me to the point where I can no longer delay sharing it.  Understand that I am not a prophet, nor do I claim to have the biblical gift of prophecy.  But…this is my dream. I was in my own town.  Familiar streets and places.  Yet I was very far away.  It seemed like evening, but I couldn’t really tell. The sky was dark, but not black.  More of a strange gray greenish color. As I walked around, I was surrounded by violence—and its evidence.  Broken things.  Broken relationships.  People using…

Recently we did a major home remodel and in the midst of the dust, discovered that our house's foundation had cracks in two places.  Damaging water was slowly leaking in.  We did not enjoy paying the price to have the foundations fixed.  But I'm so glad we did!  How wish it were that easy to repair the cracks in the foundation of our Christian culture.  We see those "cracks" when we read study after study showing followers of Jesus divorce nearly as much as followers of the world.  We see them when we read that Christians visit pornography sites with…

Let me just come right out and say it: I believe there’s a problem with prayer meeting. Not in all churches.  But in most churches I’ve been in.  And possibly in your church, as well. The problem is this.  We have allowed our prayer times to become disproportionately dominated by health concerns.  We pray for sick people—as we ought—but to the point of minimizing other critical issues: revival, repentance, the salvation of lost people.  Some of these elements are present in some prayer meetings…but they get a comparatively small piece of the prayer pie. I’m all for praying for the…

And now a few words in defense of Pastors.  Already I can see the raised eyebrows of my listeners.  "What do you mean–in defense of pastors?"  It's my careful observation–over a couple of decades now–that most pastors really COULD use a little defense.  So given the fact that October is Pastor Appreciation Month, I thought I'd try to get you to appreciate your pastor a bit more.  About the only way to do that is to address some common misconceptions people have about pastors.  Misconception #1  Everybody fauns all over the pastor.  He gets all the affirmation in the world.  …

Funny thing about getting a hole in your blue jeans.  You rarely notice the start of the thing.  A small frayed area becomes a little hole.  The little hole becomes a big hole.  And then the jeans are not terribly useful. In my opinion, that’s a metaphor for the state of today’s Christian music. I stumbled on to the problem when trying to find songs that would match a series of devotionals I was doing.  You can find tons of songs that “Wanna praise the Lord.  Wanna praise the Lord.  Yeah.  Yeah. Yuh-yeah…Wanna praise the Lord.” But the moment you…

As I write this, directly behind me in my office is a small round table.  On it is a sheet of white paper—the visible evidence of a visit from three year old Joslynn Jaeger.  The paper is festooned with an arc of seven bright orange stickers. Also on that sheet of paper, tiny crumbs of dried out play dough.  She and her “Grandma Di-Di” made two cats—one yellow, one black. They are, alas, both disassembled and back in their respective plastic cans.  Yet the evidence of Joslynn’s visit is still present.  Underneath the first paper is another, bearing a partial…