Can I trust that what comes to me is for me?

The heart is the inner face of your life. -Celtic Wisdom

SALVATION – if your concept of salvation is different than David’s idea in the Psalms then yours may not be as personal or practical to the affairs of everyday life as God intended.

Men do not quit playing because they grow old. They grow old because they quit playing.  -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Before Van Gogh was Van Gogh, he painted some pictures of streets in Ramsgate, a village in the UK.  What if he had stopped, saying, “This isn’t good enough, it’s a failure, I’m never going to amount to anything?”  Nobody, ever once, pops to the top. You walk there. Step by step, each a failure until it’s not.  If you’re not yet at Ramsgate, you’ve got some walking to do. And then, when you get to Ramsgate, more walking.

Throughout church history, pastors spent most of the week out in the community, not in a church building. Church isn’t going to a building set apart for Christians, church is going into the buildings that don’t belong to Christians.

Leaders are the Entertainment Directors of a cruise ship.  Pastors are the Spiritual Directors of a life boat.

Observation: Nearly 95 percent of the men of God I follow on Twitter are either old or dead and none of them talk about the church in terms of success and leadership.

Our first ministry is to minister to the LORD.  God did not call you to anything other than himself. When you make your title, brand, group, church, gift, office, work, etc…”YOUR CALLING” then you have left the ministry.  He called you to himself. I challenge you for the remainder of Lent to “give up” using the word LEADERSHIP.  Maybe no other singular word is more responsible for fashioning the business model of American Christianity.

To the greatest pastor in my life!  My wife…You loved me to health, emotionally and

My Wife – Diana

relationally. You gave me a consistent everyday example to gaze upon. You never failed to believe in me regardless of the situation. You were an unshakeable foundation of peaceful righteousness and a tower of an unimaginable beauty that chartered our future.  You preached with your life and were the most faithful in the face of fear from my ungodly anger and in the darkest caves of my personal brokenness. I owe the last 30 years of my life to your daily devotion of undying covenant love. To the pastor of my heart and our home…

Come to the Table and be accepted in your imperfection by the Human One who was rejected in his perfection.  Draw closer to the cross by picking up the burden that someone else is contending with.

The first eucharistic Table was laden with swords, arrogance, betrayal, jealousy, and denial…ours will not be much different.  Our Table for the Passion will be decorated by two blades. Contrasting the complication in our life by the complexity in his death.

Fasting Day 32 – Fasting isn’t designed to make you thin, but to make you into a thin place of his presence.  Day 33 – Snow is the confetti of God falling from the sapphire dome declaring that your sins are forgiven, and victory is yours, ours, his!!!!!  Day 34 – “When I can picture what you’ll look like when your dead is pretty bad. I can see the shape of your bones.” -my wife

Christ have mercy on my shaking soul.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is the Sacramental Center where most Post Modern America worships.

We live in a state of constant semi-attention…-Merton