Listen to “Stuck” Philip Yancey wrote about Dr. Paul Brand, the brilliant surgeon, who worked for many years in obscurity with lepers here in the States and in India. “He knew presidents, kings, and many famous people, but he rarely mentioned them, preferring instead to reminisce about individual leprosy patients. He talked openly about his failures and always tried to deflect credit for his successes to his associates. Every day he rose early to study the Bible and to pray. Humility and gratitude flowed from him naturally, and in our time together I sensed a desperate lack of these qualities in myself. Most speakers and writers I knew were…

In his book, “The Greatest Generation” Tom Brokaw wrote, “At a time in their lives when their days and nights should have been filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the workaday world, they were fighting in the most primitive conditions possible across the bloodied landscape of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and the coral islands of the Pacific. They answered the call to save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled, instruments of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs. They faced great odds and a late start, but they did not protest. They succeeded on every front. They won the war;…

In “The Rise of Network Christianity” authors Brad Christerson and Richard Flory describe the members of a growing network of independent congregations aligning themselves under self-appointed apostles. “There’s a suspicion of any kind of accountability structures, because these limit the power of God working through individuals. When you have a church board and an elder board that hires a pastor, then that pastor can’t do the things that God is telling him to do—because he has to go to the board to get everything approved. The real danger, they would say, is when institutions become more powerful than the individuals that God calls.”  That must have been similar to the…

It was not even a major miracle. No one walked on water or fed five thousand. As far as miracles go it was almost incidental. A nameless crippled man healed. But, in that city, it was a sign of something far more remarkable. It was an opportunity to redress an old offense to the gods. Years before, the story went, Zeus and Hermes disguised as poor travelers arrived in town and were made unwelcome. In response, they destroyed the city and all the people with the exception of one humble couple. Now, many years later, the descendants of those who had made that fatal mistake took the miracle to mean…

I have been reading Thomas Merton’s “No Man Is An Island” and toward the last part of the book he describes a man he names the “proud solitary” who has no personal core. He is hollow and living in fear he will be discovered and exposed for what he is. “Maddened by his own insufficiency, the proud solitary shamelessly seizes upon satisfactions and possessions that are not due him, that can never satisfy him, and that he will never really need. Because he has never learned to distinguish what is really his, he desperately seeks to possess what can never belong to him. In reality, the proud solitary has no…

Bob Dylan wrote: Dear landlord Please don’t dismiss my case I’m not about to argue I’m not about to move to no other place Now, each of us has his own special gift And you know this was meant to be true And if you don’t underestimate me I won’t underestimate you. Reading all the messages of outrage at President Trump’s characterizations of Africa and Haiti as “shitholes” and his wonderment at why we cannot attract more immigrants from countries like Norway, I’ve been trying to get inside his head and come to some understanding of what he means by that and why he would say it that way. It’s…

Listen to “The Impossible Will of God”   Who doesn’t want to know the will of God? As a young man, that topic occupied me as much as any other. I recall reading Alan Redpath’s guidance that discerning the will of God is done best by aligning the lights of three beacons. First is circumstances. Second is the truth of Scripture. Last, the counsel of wise friends. If those line up there is good reason to believe you are in the will of God and your decision, while not guaranteed, will more likely be the right one. But, I have discovered over the course of my life that discerning the will…

As some of you know, I enjoy taking pictures – and then finding something to say.

One of the features of the new tax reform law is doubling the standard deduction – and that is a good thing. The increase will be a genuine benefit to many middle-class families. However, it also means there will be less incentive to itemize deductions for giving and likely as well that charitable donations will suffer as a result. Much of the tax advantage of giving for 30 million people who currently itemize their deductions every year will go away. To offset this change one of the strategies proposed by advisors is putting off any annual giving not covered by the standard deduction and only give when the amount becomes…

For some time now I have been questioning if philanthropy is one of those words that has either lost its traditional definition (love of mankind) or should never have been used to describe giving in the first place. In fact, I wonder if our using “love of mankind” is possible or even desirable. Yes, there are numerous examples where giving springs from sincere feelings about the poor or a genuine desire to alleviate suffering, spread the Gospel, deliver health care, rescue young girls and boys from the bondage of trafficking, and restore dignity to people. No doubt these are good things – but are they really philanthropy? Or, are they…