I am writing at midnight on Tuesday, my grandson’s fifth birthday. We have been back from Minnesota only a few hours after spending three days there helping him celebrate. It was a time filled with joy and wonder for both grandson and grandparents until… yesterday.
On Monday, I answered my phone to hear the tense voice of an old friend who recited a brief, factual message: her ex-husband, a good friend of mine was involved in a fatal car accident near his home in Tennessee. I couldn’t grasp the content of the message because I thought I heard the word, “fatal” and asked, he was involved in what kind of accident? I still have not begun to process the news, so I can only imagine what his family is going through. I pulled up my friend’s Facebook page to see the memorial messages had begun to stack up on his wall and that made things seem even more surreal.
Just a few days earlier, I learned of a fundraiser for a high school classmate of my son who has brain cancer. I recall his father’s death from colon cancer when he was in his forties.
The shock, the feelings of helplessness, the questions about life, death, God, etc. are the typical companions of the grieving process as we try to make sense where there is none.
I find that my many years of being a pastor and being with families as they grieve makes it no easier for me, as I try to figure how to walk with friends who are wading through grief and complicated relational dynamics.
So, my way of dealing with death is to think about life and wonder if I have learned anything in 55 years, hoping that this brief visit to earth is lived to its fullest. My little personal awakenings seem like they usually happen after times of intense pain. In other words I learn things the hard way. My list has changed a lot in recent years. Here it is.
Listen to your heart; God is speaking. The voices of expectation and conventional wisdom are loud. God’s usually speaks in whisper mode and you have to really get really desperate and filter out a lot atmospheric noise to hear him.
Give your life to something you care about. Even though it may take a lot of sacrifice, preparation and time to make the transition, don’t spend your entire lifespan doing something you don’t like,
Speak your mind. Wake people from their sleepy ruts. If you unleash who are in God’s design, some people will think you have lost your mind and you will be regarded a troublemaker, but some people will love you and listen.
Love for the sake of loving. It is the most Jesus like thing you can do and the most transformational for you and other people. Do it without ulterior motive, just because humans deserve to be loved.
Do whatever it takes to express love to your wife or husband and children. You will never regret it, but you will regret it to your dying day, if you do not. Take the initiative. Keep gently, persistently chipping away at resistance.
Be flexible because you will be on the receiving end of more curve balls than you can count. Don’t give up your goals, but be willing to adapt lots of new strategies and to scrap a lot of old ones that should have worked, but didn’t.
Be honest. We are all wounded, but we can all be healers too.
Don’t give up. The important things in life will take your entire life to do.
Look for joy anywhere you can find it and laugh a lot.
Hold on to God’s peace and love. It’s yours! Never forget it!
Thanksgiving is a timeout in the football game of life. This Thanksgiving Day is a time of warm family get-togethers for many and a reminder of great personal pain and loss for others. Whichever it is for you, it is good time to remember what this game is all about.

Imagine what it would be like to be one of Jesus, hand-picked messengers sent out with supernatural empowerment to give witness to the fact that he and his kingdom is here, among us. Now imagine what it would be like once you returned to Jesus from your journey. It was like a bunch of people who just come back home after an amazing mission trip to an impoverished country… only on steroids.
I was trained in a strict fundamentalist Bible College. While I was a student I was required to sign a pledge that I would not indulge in worldly entertainment, like rock music, movies, and I think, even opera made the list of no no’s (the only one that was no personal sacrifice). I was required to dress a certain way and maintain a clean cut look that mirrored the image of what a good fundamentalist Christian looked like. I was taught what to believe about every aspect of theology down to the minutest detail. As I look back to those days of academic training, I see one thing was sorely missing… the freedom to question and express doubt.










