I've had a delightful time seeing my children's book come to life. The best is having kids come up to me and try to pronounce "Zorgus, Borgus, and Daryl." Consider the book as a unique Christmas gift for children or adults. You can always order on Amazon. Or I'll customize your book with an autograph. Order a personalized copy here.
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At this time of the year, we are encouraged to be generous. Often this makes us feel a sense of duty and obligation. Duty and obligation have their place, but I'd like to propose a better reason for giving. Paul wrote a letter from a cell block in Rome in around 60AD. He wrote this letter to the Christians in the city of Philippi as a thank you note for their financial support. Sometimes we write thank you letters out of duty and obligation. Grandma gave you $20 so you have to write a thank you. One hundred sixty-eight people gave you a wedding gift and so you have to spend 372 hours writing and mailing thank yous.
When you play the game Twister, you can pull a muscle trying to put an appendage on every dot. Right hand yellow. Left foot blue. Left hand green. Right foot red. Being a Pleaser is like a game of Twister. You bend over backwards in the impossible task of making everyone happy.
On Monday evening, Nov. 11th, Christ Memorial Lutheran Church voted to call their next Senior Pastor, Jeff Cloeter. I am humbled and honored by an assembly of 300 people who gathered to make a decision of great significance in the history of their congregation. Rev. Greg Smith has been the Senior Pastor for 32 years (and has been here for 37). This is only the third time the congregation has called a Senior Pastor since its founding in 1948.
It is appropriate and typical for a man to give four weeks of prayerful deliberation for a call. I will take just under three weeks, announcing my decision the weekend of Nov. 30/Dec. 1. In this time I will:
I recognize that my readership extends beyond the members of my congregation. Regardless of where you're at, your earnest prayer is valued. Prayer is a conflict and wrestling with God, not simply sunning one's self in God. There is no reality without wrestling . . . Serious prayer is not a sweet devotion at the day's dawn or close, but an ingredient of the day's work.
Peter Taylor Forsyth The Battle of Little Big Horn (Custer's Last Stand) Big Horn County, Montana You still might be bloated from Halloween candy. I recently heard that next to Christmas, Halloween has the highest level of "holiday" consumer spending. So in the shadow of Halloween (and the hope of All Saints Day - Nov. 1st) allow me to be morbid.
I recently returned from a hunting trip to southeastern Montana. While I spent my childhood in a rural setting, I've been urbanized for the last 17 years. Engaging a wide open and isolated land reminded me of life's raw realities. Whenever humans cluster in cities, we tend to domesticate death. We insulate mortality with health care and safety regulations. We distract ourselves from death's severity with entertaining distractions and bustling busyness. The proximity of mortality is heightened in isolated land. A Montana rancher lives with death's reality every day. You cannot escape the fact that death comes without discrimination. There are the bare bones of a calf devoured by coyotes. There is the abandoned and dilapidated shack that housed people three generations ago. There is physical danger all around. The bull that kicks in the corral. The rattlesnake in the bush. The increased danger of a flat tire miles from help with no cell service and cold night approaching. On the frontier, death is not hidden and it's always a step away. As a pastor in a city, I see death domesticated all the time. It's not that death doesn't exist. It's that we veil and sanitize it. The hospital is clean and shiny. The funeral home is warm and inviting. Mortality is trivialized in gratuitous video games, crime shows, and silly Halloween costumes. Its stark finality is avoided. "The cemetery is a reassessment of priorities." I bear the conviction that resurrection is a greater reality that death's finality. So I am not deterred by the cemetery or the the abandoned homestead. They remind me that I am limited. When death is no longer domesticated, we can honestly evaluate what we are doing with our limited time. Questions I've been asking:
When death is no longer avoided, life's priorities come into focus. |
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