Mary’s Choice

Busyness has become the mainstay of our lives. We rush to work, hurry home to make dinner for the family, scramble out the door for church or dash around to fit in our errands for the week. At the end of a busy day, we plop on the couch exhausted. I wonder what God thinks as He sees us sprint through our week? I am as guilty as the next person of having a life too full. Read more

Finding Forgiveness Through Giving It

Recently, I was teaching on forgiveness to a church in San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador. At the end of my talk, I turned the service back to Pastor Juan, the pastor of this little church that met in his house. As Pastor Juan wrapped up our time together, he told his congregation that he believed the Holy Spirit was telling him that there were five people who had significant issues that they needed to forgive. There were exactly six people that came to the front in response to Pastor Juan’s challenge. Now I was really curious. Whether in English or Spanish, five and six are not the same.

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The Lifter of My Head

When the delivery guy brought the flowering plant, several delicate blossoms danced above a mound of glossy, wide leaves.

Three days later, the stems of the blossoms drooped like overcooked linguini. I’d forgotten to water the plant.

It’s not often that the florist delivery team stops at my house, so I felt especially bad that in the rush of other concerns, I’d neglected such a simple thing as water.

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Expressing Thankfulness

For months I had been doing medical work in a small tribe in Papua New Guinea. With the closest medical worker a day’s walk away, I found myself dressing sores, dispensing aspirin, and giving medicine and injections according to a missionary doctor’s orders. It was an exhausting and overwhelming task. Before 7 a.m. every day, people waited outside my door. I’d hear the soft chatter of those waiting while I started my day.  Knowing little of the tribal language, I did my best to communicate, sticking with simple phrases.

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You Can Go Home Again

My friend Phil is a former pastor who had been forced to leave his church ten years ago because of mistakes he had made in the aftermath of his daughter’s death. Many people, if they knew of the details of his story, would say that reconciliation would be out of the question in his case. Conventional wisdom says there are certain things that are unforgivable and unrecoverable. But conventional wisdom often undervalues the power of the cross.

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