Thank God for young parents who have first steps and first bike rides still ahead. And thank God for faithful parents who allowed themselves to be used by God to teach faith and be a means of grace.

It started appearing on newsfeeds as one of those “what’s wrong with America” stories, Kid Struggling to Learn to Ride? Hire a Bike Coach. When eight-year old Max just couldn’t get bike riding down, his mom hired a $90 an hour coach to get the job done, and he got it done in one afternoon.

So it’s come to outsourcing one of the great parent-child passages, teaching your son or daughter to ride a bicycle. That’s what’s wrong with America. Who doesn’t remember the day they first rode a bike. Dad or mom running along behind and then beside and then left far back as you first experienced the exhilaration of racing down the street, wind in the face; a freedom like none you’d ever known. Of course there were those issues of stopping again and turning a corner, but they were mastered soon enough. Continue reading →

 #ItMightWork

Maybe we should call Ibrahim Musa Abdullahi the Good Muslim with the same reverence we give the Good Samaritan.

First things first. The hashtag.  You can read what Wikipedia (so it must be true) has to say, or just trust that a phrase – no spaces allowed – with a hashtag (#) in front of it has the possibility of being the Twenty-first Century version of the shot heard round the world.

During the last couple of weeks we’ve been hearing a lot about a hashtag seen round the world, #BringBackOurGirls. It’s been posted and tweeted by prime ministers and movie stars, worried mothers and, famously, our First Lady. Continue reading →

Mothers are a big deal because they comfort like no others are able to comfort…Mothers can give us a glimpse of God.

We don’t make a big deal about Mother’s Day in our worship services at LPC. We don’t ask anyone to stand and we don’t give out flowers. Some people are disappointed. Please, those of you who are disappointed and those of you who have not thought much about it, read this piece which I think says it well.  Here’s the PDF of The Wide Spectrum of Mothering.

We don’t make a big deal about Mother’s Day in our worship services at LPC, but that does not mean that mothers aren’t a big deal. We live in a world full of pastoral sensitivities about Mother’s Day, but also a world where motherhood, once as non-controversial as apple pie, is one of the many battlefields in the culture wars. Some argue that motherhood as anything less than what is depicted in misty photo on a Hallmark card is a travesty and that Hallmark motherhood is to be protected at all costs. Others depict that same Hallmark picture as representing a patriarchal and oppressive social construct, the sooner done away with the better. Continue reading →

Faith leads to a knowledge of truth that is deeper than fact and to a hope that never disappoints.

The first Sunday in May our Confirmation students will begin to create their faith statements in preparation for their public confession of faith and formal welcome into the membership of the church on the first Sunday in June.  It will be the most important writing they do this year – more important than any term paper or book report, Facebook post or text message.  It may be the most important writing not just of their first fourteen or fifteen years; it may be the most important thing they ever write. Ever. Continue reading →

Yellow lights are not designed as five seconds of grace, they are designed as five seconds of warning.

If you live in or around Langhorne, you probably know about our new traffic lights. They’re at all your favorite intersections. Or soon will be. When the work is done, traffic will flow more freely and we’ll be happy. For now work is not done, and as poles and arms and signals are installed and lane markers are painted, traffic is a mess and we’re not at all happy.

New lights with computerized control panels should control traffic flow a bit better. But our Lenape Indian paths that became Four Lanes End that became the stage coach hub between Philadelphia and Trenton really weren’t designed for SUVs and text-messaging drivers. Things may get a bit better at best. Continue reading →