“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” I have read that passage for years but only recently did I wonder how someone so beyond imagination as God could be compared to something as concrete and tangible as money. Is Matthew saying money is powerful enough to be the opposite of God? Maybe we have limited what he is saying by translating Mammon merely as money. Perhaps there is something larger at stake and actually compelling enough to be compared to God. We…

When do we start thinking about the finish line? It happens most often when we reach a certain stage of life but that stage is, of course, different for everyone. For some, they begin considering last things or finishing well when still young. For others, it may be much later. For me, it began when my grandson asked me, “How old are you, Papa?” When I said nearly 78 he was astonished. “What? And you are not dead yet?” That was my turning point for considering what time for me is left and how to use it. John’s words to the church at Sardis took on a new meaning for…

The final miles of the Camino de Santiago leading into Santiago De Compostela, Spain are not grueling but just a steady incline that seems to have no end – especially in the rain which was our fellow traveler on the pilgrimage in May. You finally reach the narrow street that funnels into the broad plaza and having taken a photo celebrating the finish you look for the Pilgrim’s House where you claim your certificate for having completed your walk. Before you receive it there is a brief survey and one of the questions is, “What was your motivation for doing the Camino?” Your choices are religious, non-religious and other. Standing…

Even the purest religions go astray in time. In the book of Judges is a story which opens with the mother whose son returns money he has stolen from her. Overjoyed, she thanks the Lord and then vows she will use a portion of the returned money to make an idol dedicated to the Lord. An idol dedicated to the Lord? What was she thinking?  How does this happen? How do people get turned around when the commandment is so clear? It is not just making an idol but thinking the idol is a way to worship God. It is still true today, isn’t it? We have people (even religious…

In the earliest days after Israel entered the Promised Land there was no plan for a single leader following Moses and Joshua. Everything was tribal by design. No President. No King. No standing national armies. There would be no United Tribes of Israel – just Tribes. There was only the common mission of completely driving out the Canaanites and observing the Law. The assumption was every tribe was capable of self-regulation for all had the same set of values in the Law. Such a system assumes people do not need external controls except in extreme circumstances. They were to look out for each other but not dominate or control. They…

When my father was five years old, he fell with a glass jar of peaches he was carrying and sliced open the wrist of his right hand. His father was a pastor in the poorest part of Nashville and had no insurance or access to medical care, so they took him to the closest hospital where the doctor on duty told them the nerve in my father’s right arm had been severed and would need reconnecting. The operating surgeon was drunk and botched the job, leaving Dad with a right hand that had little strength and was shaped somewhat like a claw. He was able to hold a nail between…

As a Southern Baptist in Texas, I have often heard congregations and missions organizations promoting the urgency for church planting in areas of our country considered completely secular – cities with low church attendance and little visible Christian influence. Considered “hard soil” or “godless” or even “lost territory,” cities like Boston, Portland, New York and Seattle have attracted waves of young planters sent by their home churches and denominations to re-evangelize these “foreign” places and Gospel deserts. I recall a friend from Georgia who, upon returning from a trip to New England, told me there were no grocery stores in the entire region because she did not see a single…

In May, our daughter Haley and I are walking the Portugal section of the El Camino and preparing for that reminded me of the last time I set out on a long walk. In 1963, as juniors in high school, four of us decided to take on President Kennedy’s challenge to walk 50 miles in one day. His brother, Bobby, had just finished his own walk, trudging through snow and slush from Washington, DC, to Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia – wearing Oxford loafers. We were inspired and anxious to do the same. Up at dawn in our loafers, we headed out with no forethought except the vague determination to return…