Archive for June 2025

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Inflating Purposelessness

June 27, 2025

  “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock.” (Matthew 7:24-25)

We have a vehicle that has a tire problem. It’s not that it needs to be replaced. We’ve done that. For some reason, the same tire keeps losing air pressure. On a monthly basis, the low air pressure light comes on, and we pump more air into it. No matter how many times we do it, cold weather aas well as hot weather, it seems to be a situation where we keep trying to pump something up that can’t hold it.

It reminds me of so many tires in the sports world. That is, our culture has a way of trying to pump purpose into purposelessness, importance into the non-essential. And being people who tend to be swayed to buy swampland in Florida, we fall into the pit of the pointless.

For example, last week there was a sports program on TV of the Dog Surfing Championships, one canine after another standing stiffly on a surfboard. Add to that the time slot for the Slippery Slide Race, the Professional Pillow-Fighting League pummeling, and the Kickball Battle of the week and a person is able to waste a whole afternoon watching contests that are about as meaningful as my Aunt Irene’s “afternoon stories” (soap operas).

It seems that our lives are so rootless that we’re on the lookout for someone or something to root for. Like the continual pumping of air into my tire, it doesn’t hold with lasting meaning. It doesn’t mean we should stay away from activities that are enjoyable and entertaining, but we have a bad habit of avoiding what is most important because we’re fixated “…on a tire that won’t last.”

I saw an interview with an Episcopalian nun named Sister Monica Clare. A new book she has written entitled, A CHANGE OF HABIT, talks about the realization of where she was spending her time. She color-coded her calendar according to different pursuits. For her, God is the top priority, but her calendar showed that she was spending very little time in ways that involved the Holy. Thus, she reorganized her life to “pursue her pursuit.”

What would we say is most important, and what are the pursuits that we keep putting air into that continue to go flat? And what are the events of life that people keep telling us are important, almost vital to our existence, that we have bought into but are really meaningless? There are passions and pastimes, and we sometimes confuse the two.

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License Plate Boasting

June 15, 2025


“All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12, NRSV)

I’ve noticed that vanity license plates seem to be multiplying like rabbits in our area. It seems that more and more people want you to be envious of either their vehicle or themselves or both. In Colorado, that statement of how awesome a person is must be made in not more than seven letters and/or numbers, including spaces. People look to be creative in the midst of those limitations, as well as not worry about Spellcheck.

So you get license plates that say things like “TheBoss” and “FastGal.” “SeeYa”, “MrMacho”, and “YouWish” are meant to tell you something about the car that whizzed by you.

It used to be that there would be catchy bumper stickers on vehicles that you’d read, like “We’re out spending our grandkid’s inheritance!” and “The One who dies with the most toys wins!” However, someone could pick up one of those at the truck stop down the road or Spencer’s Gifts. Vanity plates brought a sense of privilege to the story.

I’ve noticed that vanity plates are rarely attached to Grandpa or Grandma’s cars, Ford Focuses, or Nissan Sentras. They seem to surface on the back of BMWs, Ford Mustangs, or any kind of red sports car. They seem to nonverbally say, “Look at me!” I have yet to see a license plate on a BMW that says, “ITPAID4”!

We have a need to be noticed. Vanity plates works for some of us. Others talk about their impressive resume or wear their varsity school letter jacket that displays their achievements. I remember when I bought my varsity “I” jacket (Ironton High School), I wore it to the first football game even though it was ninety degrees and humid. I wanted to be seen for what I had already done.

It was no different in Jesus’ day. People needed to be noticed, except it was more the wealthy and religious. The poor had no place. The outcast was not to be seen by anyone. For the most part, women were to remain quiet and dependent. The religious aristocrats looked to sit in the most notable seats, the places of honor. Jesus said the Pharisees “loved to make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.” (Matthew 23:5, NRSV) Think vanity licenses plates of the first century!

Everyone has a purpose, but some people have such an elevated sense of their importance that their view of life becomes distorted. Like the middle school boy athlete who has developed a strut in his walk to let people know that he “has handles” and can “shoot the jay!” Other people in the local Target wouldn’t know that unless he walked his cockiness.

Now, I’ll slap myself in the face, because I hope people notice my writing. I’ll get a strut in my step as I arise from my writing stool at Starbucks and go for my free refill. For me, I guess I have a vanity stool. However, it’s not limited to seven letters.

Maybe I should think about a vanity plate like “WrdFrWW”!

Nah!

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LOVING THOUGHTS

June 12, 2025


“My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!” (1 John 4:11-12, The Message)

We have a hard time with the word “love.” It’s so sweet but, at the same time, so demanding. When it’s authentic, it causes us to tremble with emotion and delight. When it feels fake, we feel cheated and demeaned.

We find ways to devalue its power by saying things like, “I love to find the fault in others” or “I love it when she gets angry.” The power that love holds gets snatched away by our lust for retribution. There’s an evil that creeps into what God intended for our wellbeing.

I can expect to see that in the world. The world is screwed up and clueless. When a youth baseball coach tells his catcher to jump out of the way of a pitch and let it hit the home plate umpire, simply because he doesn’t like the previous call…that is a sign of the world’s twisted take on life. The cheering and jeering parents are an indication that their kids will grow up to be as twisted as they are.

If we can’t get a good understanding of love by watching what happens in the world, where can we find it? According to John, the answer is by keeping a close eye on the followers of Jesus who live in community together. Not that they necessarily live together in a commune, but their lives are intermeshed in significant relational ways.

John says that Jesus’ followers will experience the deepness of God’s presence and the completeness of His creation of love in its purest form as they love one another. It’s an agape love and a Philadelphia kind of love. It’s a love that looks outward as it looks inward.

Honestly, too many churches have missed the opportunity of that Godly love because we (Yes, I’m on that train, also!) mirror the world more than Jesus. We find ourselves arguing and becoming disgusted with the lack of main entrees at the potluck, the length of the pastor’s sermon, and the empty toilet paper container. Grace has left the building, pulled by the hand of love looking for somewhere else to hang out for a while.

On the other hand, when a community of believers gets it right. That is, they nail their calling and cradle the opportunity to be the depository of God’s loving presence…Wow! Ain’t that something to behold?

As John writes, that kind of love is complete and even…get this!…perfect. How many things in our world these days can be listed in the perfect column? My Bluebell Ice Cream can’t even be written there. The beautiful and heartwarming wedding ceremony is still a bit short of that status. My straight-A report card can’t even be listed as perfect. First of all, because it never happened, and secondly, it’s a standard based on achievement, not commitment.

In the chaos of our culture, does the church have a voice that speaks out of the depths of God’s love?

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The Psalms of Our Lives

June 2, 2025

“I rejoiced with those who said to me,
    “Let us go to the house of the Lord.” (Psalm 122:1)

What does your life sing? Not necessarily on tune or with a beat that others can understand, but rather a psalm that sings to the Lord.

I’ve been reading Tim and Kathy Keller’s devotional, The Songs of Jesus, which goes through the Old Testament Psalms and Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, which focuses on the Psalsm of Ascent (Psalm 120-131). It’s interesting to see the different moods of the singer, some extraordinary in their praise and others revealing an urgency to understand why bad things are happening.

It has caused me to reflect on the psalms of my life and the life of the church. What tune does my attitude hum? Is it recognizable? Is it what other people are hearing? Like an audition for “The Voice”, does my voice sound off-key or melodic? Do I echo a groan like a wanna-be rapper or resemble a Gordon Lightfoot ballad?

On any given day, my life plays like a Spotify playlist, a mixture of good and bad, deep thoughts and shallow utterances. At one moment, like the psalmist, I’m going on and on about the need for mercy and grace, and at the next, I’m pleading for deliverance from a perceived enemy.

Today, at this moment, I’m quivering about the anger of the world that has erupted in brawls at high school commencement ceremonies, seen a belligerent man setting people on fire who were peacefully protesting a cause he didn’t agree with, and seen a drive-by shooting into a group of Chicago teenagers.

Last night, I angrily sang my own psalm as a motorcyclist strolled forward between the lined up cars (because a stupid law says he can) and then took off like a rocket when the stoplight turned green. There, I guess I sounded quite like David as he yelled,

“Lord, do good to those who are good,
    to those who are upright in heart.
 But those who turn to crooked ways
    the Lord will banish with the evildoers.” (Psalm 124:4-5)

Some of the psalms my life sings are deeply personal and others are like praise songs that have lost their meaning because they keep repeating the same words over and over to ad nauseam.

Just like David’s psalms that have been remembered and sung for generations and generations, the psalms of my life will be remembered by those who have interacted with my life in some way. In some cases, I have unknowingly cast a shadow on someone’s life. Shadows can be dark and unforgiving or places of shade and rest. For other folk, perhaps my life-singing has been uplifting and humorous. A few bars of happiness may have lit up someone’s dreary day.

And so, I head into another day of psalm-ing. Lord, may it be an honest reflection of my relationship with you, as well as being an authentic sounding of what Jesus means to me.

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