Walking with Jesus

Last night I had several dreams. The first began in a room and in it I looked out into the hallway. I didn’t know the room, but I knew the hallway. It was the hallway from the house I grew up in. I dream about that house, or a semblance of it frequently, and it occurred to me when I woke up this morning that it was a foundational reality, a template, for my understanding of the world. We all have these proto-realities, these templates for understanding the world. They can be good (like a great elementary school experience) or bad (like an abusive, adulterous, or alcoholic father). But, since they are our first understanding of a given reality, they become of standard for ‘truth’ in that situation. All ‘homes’ should remind us of our childhood home in order to feel like a ‘home’. All ‘loves’ should recall our first ‘love’. All ‘fathers’ are either loving or untrustworthy based on our experience of ‘father.’ The problem arises in that our first experiences, our templates, are so ofte...

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." ~Thomas Jefferson I saw this quote on The Glenn Beck Program as I was running tonight at the gym at H-SU, and I've decided I like it. So (before the internet is taken over by the government, and my voice is erased), I want to choose not to remain silent. I'm worried about where our country is headed. I'm concerned about the statements I hear from people close to Obama; people who influence his views and reinforce his agendas. I'm bothered by the blindness of the general public to the changes that have already taken place in our government. I'm disgucted by the worldview of the Democrats. I'm disappointed by the foundational compromise of the Republican party. And, I particularly blown away by the absence of God from the whole conversation. I hear a lot of people who want to give Obama a chance. It's even on the front page of today's newspaper, de...

Sometimes our dreams tell us more than we can hear. Last night I had a dream that I'm sure had more in it than I can now recall. I had a wheeled crate full of discarded vines and I was working my way down a residential alley, a concrete drive between small houses. In front of most of the houses people were putting up fences, small yards which they were decorating for Halloween. People I knew and strangers alike were hauling in lumber, settting out friendly Jack-O-Lanterns, stacking stalks of corn against a wall, or preparing food for guests. I was like a school assignment all the parents were helping their kids with. The yards filled most of the alley, with paths leading to the homes and gates at regular intervals between opposing yards, as if to section off the alley into venues. I pushed my cart uphill through each gate, barely squeezing through, until I got to a large gate end of the alley. There, between two carts of watermelon against one of the gate doors, I found a place...

The Bible does not mention the lottery. There are no references to it at all, because it did not exist when the Scriptures were written. In fact, the only possible references to ‘gambling’ in the Bible regard the casting of lots for the cloak of Jesus at Calvary. Truthfully, I believe even this event was more about decision making than gambling and says nothing about whether what they did was right or wrong. Therefore, we who oppose the lottery need to choose carefully how we include the Bible in our conversation about it. I will attempt to do so with several general and one particular biblical realities. A case could be made for opposing the lottery on several bases. God instructs us to work for our money (2 Thessalonians 3:10) and that a man who wants to get rich quick is not faithful but evil (Proverb 28:20,22). He says looking to Fortune and Destiny for our security is the same as ‘forsaking the Lord’ (Isaiah 65:11-12). And, God says hasty wealth does not last. (Proverb 13:...