Presby-Musings

At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon.  And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) - Mark 15:33-34 I've been kind of weepy the past couple of days.   I got choked up after I watched the American Idol audition video and the short bio of a young woman who teaches special needs kids.   Then there was a song about the Resurrection that just spoke to me and I listened to it over and over again, wiping tears away the whole time.  I even got a little emotional when I was standing outside this morning, breathing in the cool morning air on this first day of Spring.   I have been flummoxed by this bout of emotional behavior.  It's not all that encouraging when you walk around with a low-grade sense that you may fall apart at any moment.   And then it hit me.   This is my fir...

Over the years, I've been pretty open about my struggles with doubt as it relates to my faith.  One of those times came a couple of years ago after the horrific tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School--when a crazed gunman callously executed little children.  After that happened, I had a dark moment or two about what God was up to, if God was up to anything at all.   I realized after Sandy Hook that all of the things I had been programmed by Christian culture to say were pretty useless and trite. In the end, I had to dive to the bottom of my doubt during that dark time in order to find some ground to push off of in order to return to the surface.  I once had a church member meet with me to share his numerous concerns about some of my recent sermon topics.  In particular, he took umbrage over my openness when it comes to my struggles with doubt.  "You shouldn't teach people that it's okay to doubt," he chided me.  "You should...

The other day I had a conversation with a friend about the years I spent as a young man not really believing in God.  She was curious what that period of my life was like, and how I came through the other side of it.  I had to confess to her that my late teens and early twenties was not the only time in my life when I struggled with a crisis of faith.  About four years ago, I found myself wrestling with doubt, and questioning my own deeply held beliefs about God, the universe and everything.   Going through a crisis of faith while still having to serve as a pastor was easily one of the loneliest times I've ever experienced.  And it would have broken me had it not been for some amazing people in my life, who spoke new truths into my heart, showed me grace and held on to me the whole time.  I found the courage then to dive to the bottom of my doubt--in large part because I knew I had lifeguards watching over my descent.  And when I pushed off fr...

In these waning days of the season of Lent, I've started to turn my thoughts toward what Jesus must have been thinking as he began journeying toward Jerusalem, and ultimately to the Cross.   When you read the Gospel accounts, Jesus seems so resolute in the stories leading up to the Passion.  In the words of the prophet Isaiah, his face was "set like flint," meaning he didn't look left, or right---he just kept moving forward toward his destiny.  But yet, when we read of his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, sweating drops of blood, praying fervently to the Father to find another way to save the world, we see a different picture.   In that moment of struggle and doubt, Jesus' humanity is unashamedly on display.  It's one of those moments when we are once again assured that (in the words of the Apostle Paul) is in every way like us, and in every way tempted  and tested  like us.  I can't tell you how it makes me feel to know that Jesus st...

When I was in seminary, I was required to take class in homiletics.  Homiletics is a fancy word for the art of preaching or composing sermons.  It was a forgettable season in my seminary career, but I still remember a couple things about the class.   I remember that the professor generally always reeked of cigarettes because he would take a smoke break right before the class--even in the dead of winter.   I also remember that he told us never to use stories from our own lives as sermon illustrations. He considered this self-indulgent.   The reason why I remember this lesson so well is because I decided there and then that it was a practice I had no interest in adopting.   And so, whether I am writing or preaching, I talk about my brokenness as well as the moments when I feel whole.  I share the ways I feel the darkness of doubt, and I share the moments when I feel the pleasure of the Lord washing over me like grace-filled rays of sunlight. ...

Many years ago, I was leading a study at my church entitled Experiencing God .  There was a moment in the study when I invited the group to talk about times when they struggled to understand why God allowed suffering and pain.  Most of the members shared their own stories--seasons of their life when they had more questions for God than answers.  But there was one couple who seemed perplexed by the exercise.  Finally, the man spoke up.  "We've never doubted God for a second," he said. His wife nodded in agreement.  "We always just assume that God knows what he's doing," she added.  As we dug deeper, I soon realized that their dogged belief really stemmed from something that they had been taught when they were very young:  Never. Question. God.  That sweet couple in my Bible study had a very simple image of God.  In their belief system, God's wider view affords God wisdom we'll never attain.  God is God, we are not.  The...

My friend Mike McHargue has written a book about his journey from being a born-again, Bible-believing, Baptist deacon to a doubt-filled atheist, who then became a sold-out, committed Jesus-follower.  It's a book about losing faith and finding it again through science.  It's also a book about how God never stops pursuing us.   I was there when Mike first revealed publicly to a room full of pastors and pastor-types that he was an atheist, who also happened to be a deacon in his Baptist church where he also happened to teach Sunday school.  He thought he would be reviled in that room, or at the very least that we would spend a bunch of energy trying to convince him that "God is not dead."   Instead, we embraced him and affirmed him in his journey.  We shared with him that we all had doubts, we all had questions and that many of us knew exactly what it was like to sit where he was sitting.  That grace was unexpected for Mike, and it opened some door...

I don't always feel close to God.  I frequently do things I wish I hadn't done.  I have moments when I struggle to have the kind of faith I ought to have.  There are days when I wonder what God is up to.   Sometimes I have doubts about my beliefs.   I also understand that for some people it might seem a bit off-putting to read these sentences, and realize they are written by a pastor.  After all, pastors are supposed to be professional Christians, right?   Except we're not.  We're just like everyone else when it comes to struggles with faith and doubt.  But I've discovered a few things over the years.  There are basically two ways that people respond when I reveal that I sometimes struggle to have faith:  They feel relieved or they become angry.   People that feel relieved typically respond out of gratitude--they are grateful that they aren't alone in their doubts, and even more grateful that a pastor would a...

I had this crack in the windshield of my car.   I'd watched the crack grow for some weeks.  It started small, near the point of impact, and then it started spreading.  By the time I finally got my windshield replaced, the crack was over a foot long and inching upward every day it seemed. The guy who fixed it told me that it started with a "small impact."  He said it was probably a rock that struck the windshield in just the right way in the right place.  "That's all it takes," he told me.  "Just a little impact like that, and it can grow."   I got to thinking about the technicians words.  "Just a little impact like that, and it can grow."  I don't remember the exact rock that made the damage, but I almost immediately saw the results.  And if I hadn't replaced the whole thing, my windshield would have become very unsafe in a very short amount of time.  I think that our faith is a bit like that windshield.  Like the wind...

My wife Merideth and I have started doing something to push back against the darkness, and to start our mornings off well.  We stopped watching cable news in the morning.  In fact, we stopped watching any kind of news at all on the TV--or listening to it on the radio.  Instead, we crank up some inspirational music on one of the Christian stations on our Pandora account.  If you aren't familiar with Pandora, just go to Pandora.com and you'll learn all about the wonder of streaming, online radio.  It's miraculous.   This song by Christian artist Lauren Daigle was playing on the Pandora station Merideth chose today:   God I give You all I can today These scattered ashes that I hid away I lay them all at Your feet From the corners of my deepest shame The empty places where I've worn Your name Show me the love I say I believe Oh Help me to lay it down Oh Lord I lay it down Oh let this be where I die My lord with thee crucified Be lifte...

I was reading today from Matthew's Gospel, chapter 28 to be precise--the passage where the risen Jesus gives the Great Commission to his disciples.  He tells them to "...go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit..."  But right before the Great Commission there are these verses:   16 Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. Seriously? Some doubted?   That verse has always perplexed me.  These were the eleven remaining disciples, mind you.  They were the ones who saw Jesus taken, many of them watched him beaten within an inch of his life, still others watched him die.  And then he appears to them miraculously, risen from the dead.   They all worshipped him on the mountain that day.  The word that's used here in Greek ( proskuneo)  is the same wo...

Doubting Thomas.   Imagine that being the name you were given for time immemorial.  When I was a kid I remember being taught a Sunday school lesson about Doubting Thomas from John 20:24-29. Thomas was one of Jesus' disciples.  After the Resurrection, Jesus appeared to all of the other disciples, but because Thomas wasn't with them at the time, he missed it.   So Thomas told everyone, "Unless I see and touch the wounds from nails in his hands and feet and put my hand in the wound in his side--I will not believe."  Of course, Jesus appears to all of the disciples a bit later, including Thomas, and calls out the doubting disciple, who finally believes.   It's the simplistic interpretation of this story that resulted in poor Thomas being given his ignominious nickname:  Thomas doubted because he hadn't seen the risen Jesus.  He shouldn't have done that.  Neither should you.  Don't be a Doubting Thomas.   But is it real...

Over the years, I've been pretty open about my struggles with doubt as it relates to my faith. I've shared from the pulpit on numerous occasions that I have had seasons when I've wondered if God is truly "at the wheel," so to speak.  I've even wondered in my lowest moments if what I was doing (this whole Christian pastor thing) was just an exercise in futility.   One of those times came a couple of years ago after the horrific tragedy that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School--when a crazed gunman executed little children.  After that happened, I had a dark moment or two about what God was up to, if God was up to anything at all.   I realized after Sandy Hook that all of the things I had been programmed by Christian culture to say were pretty useless and trite.  In the end, I had to dive to the bottom of my doubt during that dark time in order to find some ground to push off of in order to return to the surface.  I once had a church member meet...

This week we are continuing the sermon series that will take us through the month of October--a series entitled, "Haunted."  The idea behind this series is something that we all share to some extent. No matter who you are, or what your background might be you have something in common with every other person who is sitting in here today:  At some point in time you have had something happen in your past that caused you pain.   Maybe you did something you regret.  Maybe you had doubts about your faith. Maybe you learned to be afraid.  Maybe you were hurt, wounded by someone.   And for many of us those experiences feel like they happened yesterday.  We've been haunted by them, and because we've been haunted by these experiences in our past, they are affecting how we handle our present, and perhaps are ruining our vision of the future.   Throughout this series we're going to be focusing on this simple, but life-changing truth: You ...

When I "grew up" and left home at the ripe old age of eighteen, I was so full of doubts regarding my faith I didn't really know what I believed any longer.  I remember once saying out loud, " God , I don't believe you exist." and I was actually disappointed when I wasn't struck with a bolt of lightning. Little did I know that my speaking uncertainty about God into the world, was a perfectly normal and honest act of Christian discipleship .  I thought I had violated the worst rule you could violate as a Christian.  I'd been taught my whole life that the one thing you never, ever, ever doubt was God.  So when I started doing just that--I decided the whole system of belief that I'd once held dear was in question.  So I left it. As it turns out, I may have left my faith, but it didn't entirely leave me.  I found my way back--although it wasn't to the same place I once was, thanks be to God.  But many people experience doubts about Go...

One week and one day ago today my wife and I welcomed our newest little guy into the world: Jacob Andrew Michael Bloder.  At almost 42 years of age, I have thought more than once that we were both insane to even attempt to have another child.  I am fairly certain I am going to be that guy who shows up with his son on his first day of kindergarten and the teacher will say, "Oh, Jacob... how sweet that you brought your grandfather with you!" The moment that Jacob was born, I was reminded once again of the unbelievable grace and love of God.  It was a miracle to watch, and an even greater miracle to hold him.  Even now as I watch him sleep in his little bouncer just inches from my computer I am blown away by him.  In his nursery we put the following quote from the Psalms on the wall right above his dresser, "I am wonderfully made."  I learned some things through my son's birth--things that I thought I knew, but that I needed to be reminded of.  Fir...