Maximum Possible Life

You know, my pastor announced on Sunday that he was going to do a class on the subject, "If God is a loving God why does He allow evil in the world?"  Then, after the service I was talking to my pastor and mentioned having been to some pretty dark places over the past couple of years and he, with wonderful empathy, shared that he understood because he had been through some dark times himself.  But then added that he was sure his pain was nothing near the pain I have been through.  I replied by saying something about the worst thing that happens to anyone is the worst thing they have ever experienced and it hurts more than any other thing in their life, so there is no point in trying to compare our pain to someone else's. Then as I was driving home and thinking about these two things (the class topic and my comment about pain), it reminded me of some teaching I did many years ago on the very topic of the problem of a loving God and an evil world, but also remind...

It is a few days before Easter and I have been thinking about the meaning of the Easter story as it relates to, not just its impact on the whole of humanity for all eternity, but also as it relates to me, personally, as I still struggle with weakness and failure, even after having walked with the Lord for nearly fifty years.   And whenever I think about my personal inadequacies, the person in the Easter narrative who always stands out the most, other than Jesus of course, is Simon Peter. Of all of the Lord’s disciples, I have always been kind of partial to the apostle Peter.   Perhaps it is because I can relate to him so much.   He was impetuous, garrulous and rarely considered the consequences before acting.   For example, in Matthew 14, when the disciples were caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus walked out to them on the water, it was Peter who said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”   When Jesus told him to come, ...

It is both surprising and delightful to be, just now, in a place of being the recipient of consistent and genuine affirmation from a significant number of sources.  And it is enlightening to observe the impact that this approbation has had, and continues to have, on my heart and mind.  You know, the Bible says in Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”  Having experienced both the death and the life that are the fruit of what has been repeatedly spoken to me, I can attest to the truth of that passage. Finding myself in environments and relationships where I endured years—actually decades—of negative expectations, judgment of my values and actions, and contempt for my opinions and ideas, left me ineluctably demotivated, utterly depleted emotionally, and with a horribly poor self-image.  The obvious reason for this was that, no matter what I did or how hard I tried, nothing was ever considered good ...

As I have been thinking about Christmas over the past couple of weeks and considering its real meaning, the word that keeps coming to me is accessibility.  At the heart of it, what Christmas means is that in it, God became accessible to us.  You know, as I have talked to hundreds of people over the years who have struggled to connect with God, the most common theme I have heard is that for many, God is just too totally other.  He is too awesome, too powerful, too holy, too mystical, or too whatever.  But Christmas is about God bridging the gap between us and Him and connecting with us in a way that we can relate to.  As Paul says in the letter to the Philippians: 2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.  8 And being found in appe...