Transparency: A Four-Letter Word
Transparency: a four-letter word.
A four-letter word? Really? Perhaps you read that and raised your eyebrows. Maybe your lip curled in disgust that I would dare liken a harmless word such as transparency to a cuss word.
Regardless, we treat transparency and all that comes with it, with an attitude of disdain and fear. Why? We need it, yet we dread it. We are afraid of it or of what it may bring. So we treat transparency, in it’s raw and honest form, as taboo. Genuine, relational transparency seems like unnecessary or awkward territory to traverse.
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Show Me Some Mercy!
“Show me just one shred of evidence that God has mercy! Give me some mercy!” shouted a small, elderly woman named Gladys.
Her words stung into my heart and rang like a bell throughout our empty auditorium. Silence swallowed up the end of each sentence that burst forth from deep within her grieving soul. A piercing sound, then hushed silence… as if she were waiting to see if God might audibly respond for all to hear.
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Sun in the Storms
As the old saying goes, “If you don’t like the weather in Michigan, just wait five minutes.” Today is proving the wise old sage knew what he was talking about. Yet from sunshine to storms…and back again to sunshine then storms this is the day the Lord has made, therefore, let us rejoice and be glad in the One who has ordained it…
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I’m Traveling to India…
God has opened up a unique and exciting opportunity for me to go to the other side of the globe – Northeast India – to share the Good News of Jesus Christ through three large-scale Vacation Bible School programs and by teaching and preaching at a pastors and Christian workers conference, aimed at encouraging, equipping, and uniting the many national Baptist pastors in Assam and Mizoram, India….
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No Longer Indestructible
Tears welled up in my eyes. Fear raced across my mind. Anxiety tightened my heart. I never thought it would come to this. Not at thirty-one years of age. Not now… not ever! Never did I dream I’d be pushed along in a wheelchair into the triage unit of a large ER department… in order to evaluate ongoing chest pain that had bothered me for more than four weeks.
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Christ in Your Christmas
Over the last ten or fifteen years, various Christian lobbying and activist groups have been notifying me of the reality that many companies are “taking Christ out of Christmas.” So with great enthusiasm, I filled out petitions to various stores in order to encourage them to “keep Christ in Christmas.” After all, what is Christmas without a hearty, “Merry Christmas?”
The dull, placid remark, “Happy Holidays,” holds about as much cheer as “Grandma got run over by a reindeer.” And the thin veneer hung over the commercialization of Christmas and other associated holidays has become ever more sheer, so much so that I’m afraid my 5-year-old son is about ready to notice the proverbial emperor is no longer wearing any clothes. All sincere meaning seems gone…
