Presby-Musings

This past week, I drove a U-haul truck to Florida with my son's cat sitting beside me in the cab.  It took two days of bouncing up and down on the truck seat, navigating constant lane closures (mainly in Louisiana, bless), and many stops at Buc-ees to make it there.  Unlike my other cat, who screams constantly when placed in a vehicle, this cat rode placidly along for the nearly twenty-hour journey to be with her boy.   My youngest boy moved to Florida to be with his mom, so I was driving the truck with the cat to move everything, including the cat, who has been my son's constant companion for many years.     The day after I arrived, I had a full-circle moment when I took my boy to basketball tryouts at his new school, which happened to be the same school my oldest attended from 8th grade to his Junior year.  I was sitting in the gymnasium watching him play when I realized that sixteen years earlier, I had sat in that same gym watching my oldest do the same thing.  Heck, even t

Today, we are continuing our sermon series, the Oldest Story In The Book, a study in the book of Job from the Old Testament The book of Job seeks to answer the question: “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? Today: Sometimes, the only answer to our questions about suffering is that we are never meant to know everything.    Sometimes, we go through hard times that might seem unfair, unjust, arbitrary, or wrong. What do we do when we want to find meaning in our suffering, and there doesn't seem to be any? How [Not] To Speak of God - Peter Rollins What happens when we try to describe the infinite?  How far do our imaginations go? Quotes about God  Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. - Stephen Hawking God is a verb, not a noun. - R. Buckminster Fuller  People see God every day; they just don't recognize him. - Pearl Bailey  “I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way. So I stole a bike and asked for forgivene

Throughout my career as a pastor, I've had more than one occasion when I've had people who sought my counsel when it came to struggles they were having with grief, difficult decisions, relationship issues, addiction, bitterness, anger, abuse, and more. There is one thing that people seem to want to know more than anything else, and it comes in the form of an often unspoken question that hovers like a shroud over them:  "Why does it take so long?" Why does it take so long to work out my grief? Why does it take so long to get over that betrayal? Why does it take so long to feel alive again after abuse? Why does it take so long to be well after being addicted? I never have really good answers regarding that kind of thing.  "Everyone is different," I'll tell them.  "You have to do this at your pace," I'll say.  Or I might share that even though it might feel like a long time to them... they are actually making progress.  It's easy to say th

  I have been reading about resilience lately, both for my own sake and because it's become quite the topic in our culture.   As part of its "Stress Less" mental health and wellness program, NPR recorded a podcast about the Resilience Challenge conducted by Northwestern University.  The challenge was to take 20 minutes out of your day to follow a guided reflection that is designed to help you develop resilience.   The program's website crashed after the podcast aired, and Northwestern quickly filled the 20,000 registration spots to participate. I've also noticed conversations about resilience popping up on my social media and news feeds, so something is clearly happening.  And I have a theory as to what that might be.   There is a higher percentage of people in the US walking around right now with elevated levels of stress, anxiety, and dread than at any other time in our nation's history.   We're oversaturated with news coverage designed to keep us anxiou

Once in a while, I read something that perfectly encapsulates my feelings in a way that I wish I could have expressed them.   The other day, I read a quote from former Olympic cycling gold medalist Kristin Armstrong that did just that, and I'd like to share it.  Here's what she said:  I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful - for all of it. I've never read anything that summed up why I do what I do any better than this.  Honestly, I could interchange the words "preach" and "teach" with "write," and it would still be true for me.   It took me a long time to truly understand the depth of my calling to be a pastor. When you're young, you sometimes follow your gu

The American Bible Society recently published the results of a survey conducted to measure stress levels in our culture and to determine what role reading the Bible regularly might have in alleviating it or creating it.  The results on levels of stress revealed:  “One-quarter of Americans are experiencing moderate levels of stress, and 10 percent are experiencing extremely high levels. Nearly half of respondents said they had trouble sleeping, 44 percent reported feeling tense, 44 percent said they were lonely and cut off from others, and 37 percent said they felt numb or detached.” Interestingly, those levels were higher among the respondents who indicated they read the Bible regularly than those who don't. There are many ways to interpret these findings. Some people may read the Bible more when stressed, while others may discover that reading it makes them more stressed because of how they interpret it.   There is another thing to consider, though.  Evangelical Christians are pro