Truth under cover
(Christian Week – August 2015)
HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The ring that my wife put on my finger on the day that we married stayed there for some years until the sorry day it flew off while my arm was in mid-upstroke in an Ontario lake.
Christian Week
Wrestling with angels
(Christian Week – May 2015)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ It was an unremarkable day, birds and the African sunshine, the sound of a distant lawnmower, the dog laying quiet in back, shoes nearby, tea, a half-eaten yogurt, when fear washed over me like a river. Nightmares, yes, can come anytime.
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When God kissed the world
(Christian Week – April 2015)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It’s easier to kiss a lamb than a lion, I suppose, even though I’ve personally never tried to kiss either.
Even in Africa all these years, I’ve never been that close to a lion.
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Better than wine. Stronger than death.
(Christian Week, February 2015)
KAMPALA, UGANDA ✦ “Love is better than wine,” is how the writer of the Song of Songs put it. “Love is stronger than death.”
Solomon, said to be the wisest of men ever, is credited with the words that resonate with meaning even now, almost 3,000 years later, even in our time, as insecure and fickle an age as any.
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Hope in the food court
(Christian Week – December 2014)
Today in the food court there was a piano. The pianist, wearing a red Santa hat (naturally), finished “Jingle Bells” through the dull roar of shoppers, their winter coats unzipped, hats aside, while they sat and talked and ate KFC or New York Fries or whatever they happened to have.
Then a young woman, scarf thrown loosely over her shoulder, stood and put her cellphone to her ear. Strangely enough, she sang into the phone. And her voice, somehow, melodious and majestic, carried through the entire food court. Brows raised. Heads turned.
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Learning to be a kid again
KAMPALA, UGANDA✦It’s the children who in the end will be given the keys to the Kingdom.
This is what Jesus said on the matter. Be a kid again. The way up is down. If you want even half a shot at eternal life, as if it were somehow possible, go and grow young.
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Lingering on the edge of forgetfulness
(Christian Week – Friday, August 15, 2014)
HAMILTON, CANADA ✦ The sad truth of the matter is that when we stop reading the Bible with any faith or confidence, when we stop discussing it at dinner with our children, when we stop wrestling with it in our meeting places and home gatherings and while lying in bed, we’re no longer connected to the grand sweep of it, to history, that is His Story, which is also our story.
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Known by our love ( … or the things we’re against?)
(Christian Week – Friday, May 23, 2014)
PARIS ✦ Dead rock stars aren’t the only idols to worship out there. Houses and cars, retirement portfolios, relationships and sex—or, well, religion—can be equally distracting in a fallen world looking for things as nebulous as truth and meaning.
But come to the Père Lachaise Cemetery and see for yourself the cult of rock-star celebrity. In this gothic and tumbledown resting place of some of the world’s best-known artists—Chopin, Bizet, Proust, Oscar Wilde to name a few—Jim Morrison’s grave is by far the most visited.
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