"It is a solemn thing to be married; to have to preach to a congregation from your own loins; to have God put the hand of ordination on you in the birth of your children, and say to you, “ Now art thou a priest unto those whom I have given thee.”

If ever the stream of life should flow like crystal water over shining stones, it should be the stream of daily life in the family. If God has taught us all truth in teaching us to love, then he has given us an interpretation of our whole duty in our own households. We thank him that we are not born as the partridge of the wood, or the ostrich of the desert, to be scattered every whither; but that we are grouped together and brooded by love, and reared day by day in that first of churches, the family." Henry W. Beecher. 

"I love the Church and honor what it has given the world — the comfort and strength it brought to countless struggling souls. But I have to ask: if a modern believer were transported back to the early Church, would their faith grow or shrink?

Today we see God as the Father of all humanity. Back then, His favor seemed reserved for church members only. Today we feel hope for all people. Back then, that hope stopped at the institution's walls.

Today we find God's glory in nature, in history, in the whole sweep of human experience. The old Church didn't deny this exactly — but it kept pushing you toward God in special places, special moments, and one narrow thread of sacred history.

In short, modern faith has gained a certain freedom and largeness. Carried back into the old Church, it would feel bound and artificial."

 As I was walking downtown Portland, in the darkest district, I couldn't help noticing a woman as busy as one could possibly be, sweeping the street vigorously with a single stick. There was no apparent debris, nothing I could see that she was accomplishing. I've become accustomed to seeing behaviors by souls held captive in  addiction doing the most bizarre, and sometimes alarming, things. But this woman wasn't disturbing anyone, and she carried out her activity with such detail, I left wondering what in the world she was doing?

As I looked back, I noticed a pile of sticks about 3 feet long, 1 foot high and 1 foot wide, stacked with such precision even an architect would be impressed! The row of sticks was stacked with such care it had a beauty about it, almost like a weaving? It was done so intricaly, I wished I had my phone to take a picture of the artful stack.  

As I sat here this morning thinking, 'What did she hope to  accomplish?'  I have no doubt she was homeless, had no job, and has probably lost everything. But here she was, busy as one can be, sweeping and stacking sticks. I had to wonder, was she adding some small degree of order into a life of chaos? Some little effort to add  beauty among such bleak darkness? 

It was a futile effort, but it showed a spirit that had not completely given up. And for that, I admired her, and felt a whelming flood of compassion for this unknown industrialist.    

The following are thoughts I gleaned from G. Wilson Knight’s book titled – “Shakespeare and Religion.” 

“We must not forget that Jesus calls us not only to a mystic tranquility, but also to an impassioned adventure; involving action, risk, engagement with the world, and emotional intensity.

Until then, we talk of matters we do not understand: Without this balanced call (tranquility plus adventure), our religion becomes empty talk, intellectualizing, or formal ritual.

We worship ideas about God rather than encountering the living reality.

Therefore, the love to which He calls us to, Christian love (agape) doesn't suppress or deny human desires and instincts. It fulfills and directs the best in us — our deepest longings for connection, creativity, purpose, and joy.

Jesus' call integrates contemplation with action, divine love with human passion, and spirituality with real-world fulfillment. 

It rejects a faith that feels repressive, abstract, or escapist. Instead, God's love aligns with — and perfects — our truest selves and society's best potential. 

It's optimistic, seeing the Gospel as the completion of human nature rather than its contradiction.”

 

 Last night there were eight women at the jail Bible study. As always a tapestry of ages and colors and ethnicities. I can hardly describe how privileged we are as Christians to posses a book that speaks truth into every age, every sorrow, every soul, and every society.

We began in Isaiah 58:6, where the Lord unfolds both His heart and His command for all who would join their hearts to His and live beneath the gentle authority of His kingdom rule.  

"Is this not the fast (religious life) that I choose:

To release the chains of wickedness, to lighten the load of those heavily burdened, to free the oppressed and shatter every type of oppression." 

The Lord Himself chose to begin with that verse, and there we stopped to ponder and talk about what that meant to each person. There were many answers and you could almost see each mind quietly searching its own wounds, memories, and hopes to understand how these words touched their lives. 

One woman brought up addiction, another of domestic violence: we discussed racism, the crushing tyranny of political dictators, the grievous evil of child trafficking and the silent oppression of child abuse and the horrors of sexual assault.  

And as we talked, it seemed to settle over us that if this spirit — this mercy-filled attitude of heart — truly grew within humanity, whole nations could begin to heal. The world itself would breathe easier beneath the far-reaching kindness of God’s loving mercy.  

 

 

Here is a word of advice for girls written by Frances Willard, considered the most influential woman of the 19th century and was commemorated on a U.S. postage stamp.  I think her advice is  equally good for boys. 

“My dear girls, dreaming is the poorest of all grindstones on which to sharpen one’s wits. To my mind, the rust of woman’s intellect 

and the worm in the bud of her noblest possibilities 

has been this aimless reverie: 

this wandering of thought, this vagueness that ends in emptiness. 

Let us look inward, those of us who are not fully engaged in work of brain or hand. 

What do we find? 

A mild chaos; 

a glimmering nebula of fancies; 

an insipid brain-soup 

where a few lumps of thought drift in a watery gravy of dreams. 

And since nothing comes from nothing, what wonder if no brilliance of achievement seems likely to light our future? 

Few women, under the present order of things, can claim complete freedom from this grave intellectual infirmity. 

Somehow one falls so readily into a sort of mental indolence; 

one's thoughts flow onward in a pleasant, gurgling stream, 

a sort of intellectual lullaby, 

coming no-whence, going no-whither. 

Only one thing can help you if you are in this extremity, 

and that is what your brothers have — 

the snag of a fixed purpose in this stream of thought. 

Around it will soon cluster the dormant ideas, hopes, 

and possibilities that have thus far floated at random.” Frances Willard.

 

"I’ve talked about the sudden change of heart that happens when a new faith opens up inside someone. Early Christianity clearly recognized this as possible.

Philosophers are partly right when they emphasize the power of habit and how slow, difficult, and gradual moral improvement usually is. They doubt abrupt conversions can happen. But they don’t have the whole truth. 

I believe the popular view—that real change can strike suddenly—contains a deep reality. Most genuine popular beliefs about inner human experience usually do. It’s true that instant, total transformation of the mind is rare, especially today. Yet nearly all the most remarkable moral recoveries we see (and there are far too few) happen exactly this way.

Yes, the normal path—wrestling your way out of destructive passions through sheer willpower and reason—is slow and exhausting. If all change worked like that, the philosophers would be correct to call it uncommon and laborious. But real transformation often comes from a higher, more powerful source. 

It begins with a new, intense feeling—a fresh surge of reverence, shame, or love—that then pulls reason and conscience along behind it. 

The bad habits and failings aren’t carefully dug out one by one like weeds in a garden. Instead, they’re burned away in a sudden blaze of divine shame and love.

This kind of change cannot be planned or counted on. Trying to calculate or schedule it is extremely dangerous. The deepest movements of the soul pull away from our schemes and predictions. They come unannounced—or not at all. 

If you try to force or rely on them, you only drive them further away, revealing how barren your own heart has become. Self-cure is incredibly hard. What is impossible for us on our own may be entirely possible for God.

In the end, denying that such sudden changes can happen—while pretending to be wise about human nature—actually shows a profound ignorance of real people." James Martineau.

 

Chance encounters

When I go to the mission it's rare to come away without an unforeseen  blessing. I go to mentor one of the men in the drug and alcohol recovery program and while waiting for him I struck up a conversation with another man in the program, let's call him Jose. I asked him what it was that made him decide to come to the mission. He told me he was a gang-banger in L.A. and at some point he got fed up with the life and joined Salvation Armies program, stayed with it and graduated from it. After graduating he wanted to move away from his familiar stomping grounds and that's what took him to Portland. He stayed with Salvation Army in one of there programs, and was doing well until.... he met some "wild-eyed" beauty that swept him off his feet, and he left the program. She lived in a rough part of town and to make a long story short, one night while he was with her, two men started kicking down the door! She ran to the bathroom and he, dazed and confused, was just standing when the men burst in. They both drew on him with 9mm's and from six feet opened up and fired at him 15 times! When they began shooting he said it was like everything turned to slow motion, but amazingly he felt the presence of the Lord on him so strongly he felt no fear! He felt a bullet tear into his left arm but felt nothing else. After one of them ran out of ammo. and the other's gun jammed, they turned and ran out leaving him standing there with blood everywhere. His girlfriend came out of the bathroom, saw him and he called out and said, "Help me." Then he collapsed. The next thing he remembered was waking up in the hospital. 

That was enough, after he recovered, he left her and headed to the bus station to go back home. On his way, as it happened, a fella who works at the Union Gospel mission program, struck up a conversation, and he found himself joining the mission. 

The bullet that struck him hit his forearm, bounced off a bone and traveled up his arm and bypassed his heart by a millimeter, and stopped lodged in the back of his shoulder! He promptly took off his shirt and had me feel the tip of the bullet right under his skin! The surgeon's scar was nearly the length of his entire arm! 

Just then, the man I came to meet entered, let's call him Bill, he is friends with Jose, the man sharing the story, and they say they belong to the club of "Fifteen." Fifteen mercies, Bill overdosed on Fentanyl 15 times before he fled to Christ, and Jose was shot at close range 15 times, and all the bullets missed him but one, and that was in his arm. I'll tell you, the presence of the Holy Spirit was so heavy on all three of us I thought my soul was going to burst! 

 Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”