It was a Friday some 2,000 years ago and he was a hardened criminal with a sorry life. For what it was worth, that life must have played before his mind’s eye like a regrettable movie. He was dying by asphyxiation, lack of oxygen. This is how criminals, would-be revolutionaries
From an instrument of pain to a symbol of healing power Read More »
She’s the Ugandan girl who we left behind in a part of the world where, this weekend, there is no Father’s Day. And even if there was, this girl, our friend, has no father to honour on it.
So while it’s only suitable that so many fathers and children
For Gloria, the fatherless girl we left behind Read More »
(The UCU Standard – March 19 – April 5, 2015)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ As a boy I hoped for, and believed in, small and foolish things that at the time seemed big and sensible enough. Now I hope for things that are big and sensible enough to my children, even if I think they’re small and foolish to me.
Mysterious and foolish things Read More »
(UCU Standard – Monday, November 17, 2014)
MUKONO, UGANDA ✦ It’s a risky move, of course, to open up your Sunday morning message to questions. You never know who might ask what.
But this is what happened last Sunday. The minister who I listened to had a post-sermon question-and-answer session and a woman stepped forward with what they call a show-stopper.
Her voice quivering, she asked rather plainly and desperately, “So just how do you get saved?”
Salvation is a mystery that can’t be faked Read More »
He was a man, youngish, well, certainly not all that old even if he had a beard that put some years on him. For one reason or another, he had come a long way, halfway across the country, thousands of kilometres, in his black pick-up truck. And then, finally, he stood there at the front door
A long drive (Excerpt #4 – Forgiving our Fathers and Mothers) Read More »
Some weeks ago I introduced this book, Forgiving our Fathers and Mothers, in this space, a book by Leslie Leyland Fields that is recently released. Leslie is a writing colleague I met during while studying in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University. Leslie knows first-hand the great importance
Forgiving our Fathers and Mothers – (Excerpt 1 – Silence) Read More »
It was Father’s Day Sunday morning and I was speaking to a local gathering about fatherhood and forgiveness. This was a surprise to even me because my own father was perfect. He doesn’t need forgiveness. As was his father, perfect. Never went wrong. Never had a selfish thought. No, not once. And his father too. Always
It’s a privilege to be a (perfect?) father Read More »
Even on this side of Easter, forgiveness is no easy thing. Christ said so much during a beachside breakfast with his friends on a lake not long after the remarkable events of Easter weekend. He did this during that rather poignant exchange with Peter, that friend of urgency and largeness who, just days earlier, while
