As I walk with my walker, I sometimes notice my palms are red from holding the handles too tightly, gripping it for safety and security. But I realize that neither safety nor security depends on the intensity of my grip. Instead, I am safe and secure for reasons completely unrelated to my own efforts and determination. In fact, my sense of safety and my perception of security are actually counter-intuitive. Compounded by Parkinson's, my senses of direction and balance actually mislead me as I trust in them. These physical realities are also parables of our shared spiritual condition. We are … [Read more...]
THE LINCH-PIN OF OUR FAITH
.The Age of Reason was dawning, and an anti-Christian intellectual named Lepeau was desperate for advice. He had created a rational new religion, Lepeau told French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, but, despite its superiority to Christianity, it had failed to catch on. Might Talleyrand have any suggestions? “M. Lepeau," the diplomat dryly replied, "to ensure success for your new religion, you need only two things. Arrange to have yourself crucified, and three days later rise from the dead.” New religions recoil with horror at the suggestion and respond with derision … [Read more...]
SOMETIMES THERE ARE NO WORDS
Sometimes there are no words. It is nearly 11:00 p.m. one night last week when I happen to encounter Joe (not his real name) at the care facility's empty snack bar, both of us restlessly trying to work away some pain by wheeling our wheelchairs about the place. (If you can't wheel your wheelchair, what in the world can you wheel?) Joe is in Stage 3 cancer at multiple locations. But that is not what troubles him most. His greatest grief arose nearly a dozen years ago, when a vehicle accident for which he blames himself claimed his young son's life. Joe's wife, a devout Christian who Joe … [Read more...]
THANKS BE TO GOD!
For the past sixteen months, severe pain has been my constant companion, a reality that some of you also experience even as you read these words on this page. Yes, there is a mystical koinonia of suffering, a fellowship to which only those who experience it can belong. This passive yet profound relationship requires no invitations, schedules no graduations, and defies the ability of words to define. As had Jesus the Messiah before him, the apostle Paul walked this path of suffering and found it overwhelmingly positive, filled with overtones that are redemptive and perhaps meritorious as well. … [Read more...]
HOPELESS AND WITHOUT GOD
You would never suspect it from his appearance--tall, pleasant smile, brushed back white hair--someone's "Grandpa Mike," you imagine (not his real name). Nothing he does betrays his secret either, as we work side by side in occupational therapy this morning, here at Rehab Hospital in Houston's western suburb of Katy. Suddenly Mike grimaces and a look of pain crosses his face. "It's so frustrating," he says. "Completely hopeless." He cannot hear, Mike tells me, but he reads lips some. He speaks but without context. He is too blind to read--but not too blind to see … [Read more...]
MY ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
Considered in the past tense here at summer's end, the six cumulative weeks recently spent in three Houston hospitals appear more and more purposeful and increasingly less a matter of waste. The metaphor persistently recurring in my mind is a summer program in alternate education. A typical school catalog might describe it as "an unconventional approach to learning, featuring hands-on courses in an immersionist environment, complete with full laboratory experience." All that said, however, the real zinger remains undisclosed--a zinger that, if known, might easily deternine the decision whether … [Read more...]
HE KNOWS OUR HEARTS
I cannot help but notice her as I approach my gate seating area at Houston Intercontinental Airport. Medium build, cropped brown hair, loose fitting slacks and shirt, and only one arm. We are both an hour early for this flight to Lubbock, where I am to speak six times over the weekend about God's guidance I am carrying my Bible and notes in a cloth tote bag that says "State Bar of Texas." The plane is late. We have another hour to wait. As I take a stretch break, I word a silent prayer. "If there is anyone here, Lord, with whom you wish me to connect, please call it to my attention." I walk … [Read more...]