Bumper Sticker Patience

Posted July 31, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“And don’t say anything you don’t mean. This counsel is embedded deep in our traditions. You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, ‘I’ll pray for you,’ and never doing it, or saying, ‘God be with you,’ and not meaning it. You don’t make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. (Matthew 5:33-34, The Message)

Recently, I was driving down one of our city boulevards and was passed by a car in the next lane. As the car passed, I noticed a bumper sticker on the trunk that read, “Please Be Patient. New Driver.” A half-mile or so up the road, the other car was slow accelerating after being stopped at a red light. I passed the car on my passenger side and noticede that the “new driver” was a young guy who was staring at the screen of his cell phone as he picked up speed again. (Since January, in Colorado, it is against the law to drive while holding a cell phone in your hand.

I thought to myself, “Am I to be patient because he is a new driver, or because of his distracted state due to his cell phone?” Would they not have covered this in his driver’s training class?

It is a simple form of communicating mixed messages. Kind of like parking in a handicapped parking space and, just in case someone was looking, hobbling inside the mall before racing up and down the corridors. Our words and actions are often from two different hemispheres.

I think of business slogans…you know, the heart and soul of a company, what defines them…and the opposite vibe so many of their employees display. Perhaps we have evolved into a culture that says things it doesn’t mean, and does things it won’t say.

I stand convicted myself. My bumper sticker might read, “Follower of Jesus, Now Get Out of My Way!” Or, “I’m a Pastor. Leave Me Alone!” I mix my messages up, confusing body language signals with sympathetic verbiage, and applauding someone else’s recognition when jealousy drips out of my emotions.

Some of my mixed messages are only apparent to me because I am outwardly saying what inwardly I’m NOT thinking. They say that actions speak louder than words but thoughts show that we’re all guilty.

Jesus, help each one of us to live what we say; to love who we say we love; and to pray for who we say we will pray for. Amen.

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Hating Good

Posted July 20, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“ I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:9-10)

A college friend of mine posted the news this morning that the church he pastors was burglarized and vandalized last night. Rooms were ransacked, sound equipment was stolen, and thousands of dollars of damage was done. The church also has two minority congregations that use the building as well. It’s a light and a place of hope that is now grieving the callousness of a few.

My church has had scaffolding in place for several weeks to fix some structural problems on our bell tower. The scaffolding has fencing around it for the protection of pedestrians who walk by the front of the building, as well as a deterrent to anyone who might consider climbing on it. A couple of weeks ago, someone (or more than one) climbed over the fence, up the scaffolding, and painted graffiti on the tower a good thirty to forty feet up from the ground.

A skate park in Pueblo West, Colorado, in recent days has been graffittied so much that the hours that the public can use the park have been significantly reduced, and police drive-bys have been increased.

We are shocked by things like this, and yet we shouldn’t be. In our physical world, we become blind to the spiritual conflict between good and bad, the ways of God versus the work of the Deceiver. We blame it on bad kids, insensitive adults, and out-of-control hooligans. If there were simply more police, we theorize, problems like this wouldn’t happen. We fool ourselves into thinking that would be the solution for justice and getting back to a world that is good and civil.

Let’s not sound like religious crackpots and suggest it’s spiritual warfare.

And so we had Bob Vylan leading a crowd of thousands of music festival attenders in England in chanting “death, death to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces). Whatever your stance on the Gaza situation, promoting hatred in such a way is another sign of the chaos and distortion promoted by the forces of darkness.

An organization that tracks the number of church vandalisms has reported that there have been over 30,000 incidents in the United States in the last four years. An estimated $75 million in damage occurs annually as a result of church fires.

We have a tendency to categorize the crimes as a ripple effect of societal problems and even political differences. Whereas, there is truth in that we are prone to brush to the side the spiritual warfare that is happening. Perhaps our minds have become so removed from the spiritual dimension of life that it’s like “out of sight, out of mind.”

There is a vendetta against good, against wholesomeness, against the ways of peace. The media is very good at putting the chaos of our culture in front of us and keeping us informed about how out-of-control the world has gotten. And so a church in California is cleaning up the mess, mourning for the wounds to its faith community, and trying to figure out why it happened.

To put a positive spin on it, scripture tells us that things like this will happen. Followers of Jesus will deal with the consequences of following Jesus. It will not always be understandable and will bring us to tears and leave us with unanswerable questions. In the end, our faithfulness, grace, and mercy will bring glory to the One we serve. In many ways, that goes against our culture’s solutions but points us towards hope and peace.

The goodness of God will one day triumph over the hatred of darkness.

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Be Kind…Even If…

Posted July 11, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” (Galatians 5:22-26)

A young lady in my youth group has started her first job at a fast-food restaurant. She has gotten up-close and personal with humanity this past week, and experience that no amount of manual training can prepare a teenager for.

She’s getting the idea that people are rude, mean, and unreasonable. The fact that a person’s french fries were left out of the order should not justify verbally abusing the young lady who brought the order to you. Cheap food sometimes produces cheap personalities and caustic attitudes.

This young lady is an awesome individual: hard-working, caring, a good listener, and a devoted follower of Jesus. The first-job experience, however is taking its toll on her. She came home extremely emotional after her first long day of delivering food to entitled adults, who have probably been their child’s teacher’s worst nightmare.

Kindness is one letter longer than “kid-ness.” I find that interesting, in that Jesus talked about becoming like a child (a kid): “And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matthew 18:3) Kid-ness, I think, is wrapped up inside kindness. Which prompts the question, “Why are adults so abrasive about the fact that they had asked that there not be any mustard put on the sandwich, and there was?” Why does there seem to be battles happening over trivial details?

Perhaps it’s the absence of civility in our culture that has caused a void to develop, a chasm if you will, between treating people with respect versus belittling people with verbal venom. We don’t hear of many examples of kindness but we see a multitude of unkindness demonstrated each day at the highest levels in the lowest ways. We see the boldness of social-media-bullying from folk who don’t have the courage to confer face-to-face with those they have differences with.

At my middle school, our motto has been “Be Kind!” In many ways, that’s a good reminder, but it also makes me wonder if we’ve given up hope by even having to say the two words. Do people need to be reminded to treat their fellow man with respect? Shouldn’t that be on the same education level as 2+2=4?

My prayer for the young lady from my youth group is that she doesn’t give up hope on the goodness that is possible in people, that she sees herself as a light in the darkness that will not be dimmed by the stains of the world, and that she will see that smiling and being kind even in that moment of customer dissatisfaction about insignificant matters may be used to change that very person’s attitude.

May her kindness remain planted in kid-ness!

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Enjoyable Experiences

Posted July 5, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,  in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11)

Recently, a Hollywood actress boasted on a podcast about her sexual adventures. She mentioned the number of one-night-stands she had been involved in, and how amazing one of them had been in a recent experience. There was no shame, no regrets. She lives by the principle, “If it feels good and I want to do it, then I’ll do it.”

It’s the adult version of what I tell my middle school students. I point my finger in front of me and draw a invisible circle around it and say, “This is you and the world revolves around you.” In regards to this actress’s sexual exploits there is no consideration of the emotional damage or misleading ideas she creates. It’s all about her enjoyment. Like I said, “…the world revolves around her.” Most of the time, when middle schoolers do something stupid, they have regrets. Putting thumb tacks on the classroom teacher’s chair may have led to laughter for a moment, but then the harsh return to the real world wiped the smiles off of the offending student’s face.

Many adults, on the other hand, put the exercising of stupidity and self-centeredness on their resumes. Lack of morals is viewed as a sign of the times. It’s just part of life. Life, according to the new mindset, is about doing things that are enjoyable, not necessarily beneficial.

When enjoyment becomes the shrine of worship, the world gets a little more warped and unpredictable. It’s like being on a seesaw where I want to control the movement, and the other person is left dangling in the air. It’s all about me and what I want. “How much I enjoyed it”, regardless of its effect on others, becomes the measure of value.

Walking with Jesus isn’t always enjoyable. It’s revealing. It includes walks of soul-searching, walks of repentance, and walks of comfort. If what a person points toward is having an enjoyable experience with Jesus, it will result in a superficial, self-serving kind of faith…shallow, undemanding, and punctuated with meaningless laughter.

There is joy that takes residence in our soul, but that is different than experiential enjoyment. When we walk with Jesus, we find that it involves taking a knee in His presence, letting Him control the direction of the walk, allowing Him to be the King.

When the joy of the Lord is evident, there is no boasting about my exploits and transgressions, just sorrow and a deep desire to be taken back into His embrace.

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Inflating Purposelessness

Posted June 27, 2025 by wordsfromww
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  “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

Posted June 15, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“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

Posted June 12, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“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

Posted June 2, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“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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The Seat

Posted May 30, 2025 by wordsfromww
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“With the crowd dispersed, he climbed the mountain so he could be by himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night.” (Matthew 14:23)

I sit in the same seat for the Sunday morning worship service. Call me a creature of habit or someone who is set (or sits) in his ways. It’s just what I do. A young military couple sits in front of me and a 95-year-old man sits at the other end of the pew. My wife sits beside me, and my youngest granddaughter chummy’s up on my other side. My seat is my place of reflection, peace, and comfort.

I also sit in the same seat at Starbucks, the last stool on the right facing out toward Pike’s Peak. It’s my blog writing spot (where I am currently sitting). You can tell when I’ve been teaching too much by the absence of blog posts for a while. I like this seat for the view and being able to “pull to the side.”

Jesus had a tendency to find a seat in the secluded, a spot where he was able to be alone and pray. Even on the night when he was facing his death, he went to the Garden of Gethsemane with some of his disciples. A lot of attention is given to their drowsiness, but before we get to that point in the story Jesus has said to them, “Stay here while I go over there and pray.” He drew aside to His spot. His “seat” was one of agony and conviction. He knew He was like a Death Row inmate in his final hours. The seat off to the side gave Him the time and space to come to grips with His purpose and destination.

Years ago I asked a man at the church I pastored why he sat in the same seat each week in worship? In my youthful brashness, I had assumed that he was an older man set in his ways and couldn’t see to do something different for a change. His answer made me feel like an insensitive jerk. The seat where he positioned himself was where he had sat with his son for his child’s growing up years…his son who was killed in Vietnam serving his country. When he sat in his seat, he felt close to his departed child.

Where we sit often has a backstory to it that needs to be told and honored. In our world that has minimal stability and consistency, we are hungry for places to sit, places to rest, and seats for contemplation. When we find that place, its sacredness becomes evident. We recognize it as being a gift. When others invade our space a sense of unrest settles upon us as the peace and quiet disappear.

Even this morning, as I was coming to the end of this blog, three young guys settled in around me and chatted loudly and long. In a way, I felt cheated that my seat had been invaded. They didn’t realize it. The world doesn’t realize it. In a way, it made me appreciate the hour of peace I had been gifted with before they came.

May each of us have some seating and sacred moments this day. Amen.

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The Sandals

Posted May 19, 2025 by wordsfromww
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 “I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.” (Matthew 3:11)

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate.  For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate.” (Luke 15:22-24)

When I walk down our driveway to get the mail out of the mailbox, I usually put shoes or sandals on. The little rocks that I swear weren’t there a moment ago seem to move onto the driveway when they see I’m barefoot. Even though I look like I’m trying to navigate my way through a minefield, I rarely get down to the postal box (to clear out the daily junk mail) without the pain of a stone pushing on the tender underside of my foot.

Sandals spare me the pain, even the Waste Management sandals my sister-in-law’s husband, Mickey, gave me twenty years ago when he was a top salesman for the company. Sandals were a gift that I continue to use.

I notice that sandals have a significant role in the walking journey described in the Gospels. That is, they leave a trail that begins with unworthiness and progresses from there. There’s a reference in each of the Gospels where John the Baptist is quoted as saying he’s not even worthy to untie or carry the sandals that Jesus is wearing. To untie Jesus’s sandals that had leather straps would have required John to stoop down, get on his knees, and assume the position of a servant. He did not consider himself worthy enough to do that lowly task.

It’s a picture of our unworthiness to experience the love, grace, and forgiveness of God. In a way, Jesus is on the throne, and each of us isn’t.

As we know, though, Jesus invited people to walk with Him. He taught as He walked. His sandals covered many miles as he traveled the dusty roads and rocky paths. There was plenty of dust to make the traveler’s feet a sight for sore eyes. In fact, Jesus tells his disciples to go into towns and villages and share the good news of God, but if they are not accepting the disciples are to shake the dust off their feet as they leave the town. It’s a sign of the judgment of God upon those who do not welcome Jesus’s messages of hope and new life.

However, the journey of the sandals arrives at grace and forgiveness when Jesus tells the story of the prodigal son returning home from his time of willful lostness. He has gone through all of his earthly possessions, his inheritance, and comes back…sandals went…hoping that his father will have a little pity on him and hire him to take care of the livestock since he’s not worthy enough to be his son anymore.

His father welcomes him with open arms, throws a party and a Texas barbecue, and puts sandals on his feet. It’s an amazing story that shows how deep and gracious is the love of God. Putting sandals on his feet was a sign that he was worthy to be called one of his father’s sons…no matter where he had come from…no matter the pain he had caused…and no matter the pain he had endured in his walk of blame and walking home in shame.

Sandals told him he was loved. As I look at my pair of (interestingly enough) Waste Management sandals, I’m reminded of the One who walks closely with me.

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