How do I blog without losing something important in my soul? For now, this is my answer: I must blog less, and do more long-view writing that generates joy — both in my life and, I hope, in the lives of my readers.
As a pastor, I am a nurturer. I am there to help the people. In times of sorrow, I weep with them. In happy times, I celebrate with them. I can celebrate a birth in the morning and be at a funeral in the afternoon. It can all happen in a 24-hour period. It can be emotional.
The key message of Christmas is that God in Jesus commits to dignifying and transforming human ordinariness, not to fantasies about a super-hero figure or
On the third hellish day, as I struggled unsuccessfully to hold down liquids, I decided to envision each person who walked through my door as God the Father or God the Son bringing the Holy Spirit. After this resolve, the second person to arrive was a nurse named Jesus!
Back in the 1950s you opened up the newspaper on the first January certain to find the cartoonists trotting out the images of the little baby in diapers imprinted with the new year’s numbers, and old Father Time with his hourglass and scythe.