Thursday, September 28, 2017


 I preached on the Good Samaritan at the jail last night, remember, the victim was stripped, beaten and left half dead. That's the part I focused on. I talked about how many of us are like the victim:  stripped:  stripped of self-worth, our dignity, confidence and value as a person. 
Then of course beaten, abused, sexually assaulted and abandoned, and lastly, left half dead; which of course abuse does; it robs our joy: and life without joy is but half life; it steals our hope and crushes our peace. 

 It was well received and after the service a fella about 35 came up to me and confided that his mother sexually assaulted and brutalized him when he was a young child. She is still in prison, and has been for 31 years. 
He was adopted at five and now he has a Masters in clinical psychology, and has been a therapist for years. It was strange to talk to a therapist who had not found healing for himself. 

He said the kindest things to me, it was obvious the Lord touched his heart in a real way and he, in a formal kind of way, gushed affection towards me and repeated a number of times how he, just had to let me know he was moved, and then he said, "I wish I had someone like you in my life." That really got to me. 

 This man, sitting as a boy in need, touched my heart and I sensed a warm flood of affection for him as his eyes welled up with past pain. It was a "moment." Moments I live for. 





  "I say gratefully, that this is one of the benefits of growing older, that beautiful things seem to speak more and more instantly to the mind. Perhaps the faculty of eager enjoyment is somewhat blunted; but the appeal, the sweetness, the pathos, the mystery of the world, as life goes on, fall far oftener and with far more of a magical spell upon the heart."       Arthur Benson.



Friday, September 22, 2017


I took a lonely walk to-day, and returned through a new quarter of the town. When I first knew it, thirty years ago, there was a single house here-an old farm, with a pair of pretty gables of mellow brick, and a weathered, solid, brick garden-wall that ran along the road; an orchard below; all round were quiet fields; a fine row of elms stood at the end of the wall. It was a place of no great architectural merit, but it had grown old there, having been built with solidity and dignity, and having won a simple grace from the quiet influences of rain and wind and sun. Very gradually it became engulfed. First a row of villas came down to the farm, badly planned and coarsely coloured; then a long row of yellow-brick houses appeared on the other side, and the house began to wear a shy, regretful air, like a respectable and simple person who has fallen into vulgar company. To-day I find that the elms have been felled; the old wall, so strongly and firmly built, is half down; the little garden within is full of planks and heaps of brick, the box hedges trodden down, the flowers trampled underfoot; the house itself is marked for destruction.

It made me perhaps unreasonably sad. I know that population must increase, and that people had better live in convenient houses near their work. The town is prosperous enough; there is work in plenty and good wages. There is nothing over which a philanthropist and a social reformer ought not to rejoice. But I cannot help feeling the loss of a simple and beautiful thing, though I know it appealed to few people, and though the house was held to be inconvenient and out of date. I feel as if the old place must have acquired some sort of personality, and must be suffering the innocent pangs of disembodiment. I know that there is abundance of the same kind of simple beauty everywhere; and yet I feel that a thing which has taken so long to mature, and which has drunk in and appropriated so much sweetness from the gentle hands of nature, ought not so ruthlessly and yet so inevitably to suffer destruction.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

  "As children, we believed that the image of ourselves that we saw mirrored in our parent's faces and in their behavior toward us, accurately reflected our true identities.
Children assume that Mommy and Daddy always tell the truth, that's why they accept without question the reflection they see of themselves in their parent’s faces and voices.
  Young children lack the reasoning skills to figure out that what they see in their parent's faces and hear in their voices reflects and echoes who the parent is, not who the child is."

Think about the ramifications of that for a minute. 

 Dr. Sandra D. Wilson from, "Hurt People Hurt People." 

Friday, September 15, 2017



  "I like to see people sing when they have to stop in the middle of the verse and cry a little. I like such unwritten rests and pauses in the music. Beecher.