Sally, our office manager, was on vacation this past week, and so the rest of us took turns picking up the phone when it rang. Hardly a bother, it was nice to talk to a parent wanting to register a child for Vacation Bible School or a volunteer trying to navigate the bureaucracy of the state’s new child protection act.

Hardly a bother, except. Except for those calls that always start the same way, “May I speak to the person responsible for the Verizon bill?” Even, “I need to speak to the person responsible for the PECO account.” Their point, of course, is going to be a pitch for a new long distance carrier or a better electricity supplier. My point is to dispatch them a quickly as I can. Dispatch as in hang up as soon as I can. Continue reading →

We’ve heard the story. The scene was the bond hearing for Charleston murderer Dylann Roof one week ago today. The Washington Post put it this way: “I forgive you,” Nadine Collier, the daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance, said at the hearing, her voice breaking with emotion. “You took something very precious from me. I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you.” Family members of some of the other victims added similar words.

We don’t know what to do with forgiveness. As the story of the forgiving families spread, most response was of admiration if not a little bit of confusion. On Saturday the editor of The New Yorker wrote saying that he found the forgiveness to be “superhuman” and “unfathomable.”  He pondered aloud about the source of this forgiveness and concluded that it must have something to do with the incredible power of the Civil Rights movement. He never once considered the Christian faith that empowered those who struggled so mightily. This is an opportunity and responsibility we have in times such as ours. We have a story to tell, the story upon which the story of the forgiveness of the murderer of the nine in Charleston rests. Continue reading →

We tire quickly of any story that is captured by the 24-hour news cycle. Already it seems that too much has been said by reporters, pundits and commentators about the tragedy in Charleston. We should allow the story of the Charleston church killings to linger for awhile, however. In the thick of all the reporting and all the commenting there are things that God would teach us. We must ponder the culture’s culpability for giving evil the opportunity it finds in racial hatred. As we seek healing, our journeys must start in our own hearts. None of us, not one, is immune from the need to search his or her own heart. Continue reading →

One week ago I was in Durham, NC, with a couple of hours to kill before I dropped my friend off at the airport and we both headed home from our week of theological study.  We found Bennett Place and decided to visit. Bennett Place is an historical site. There’s a well-done visitor center and then the old farmhouse and outbuildings.

A week after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April, 1865, and just days after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman and Confederate General Joe Johnston met on the road from Raleigh to Greensboro to arrange the surrender of Johnston’s 85,000 troops. The surrender would effectively end the Civil War. On his way to meet Sherman, Johnston had passed the Bennett farm, and both generals agreed to use the parlor of the Bennett house as a place to sit down and begin negotiations. Sherman, who is often credited as developing the concept of “total war,” was amazingly gracious in the terms he offered. The politicians in Washington would denounce Sherman as a traitor and remove grace from the surrender. Continue reading →

It is an all-comers event and everyone is invited. We’ll gather tomorrow morning at nine and soon enough we will figure out the best way to get 6,400 crayons into 800 ziplock bags; eight crayons, one of each color, in each bag. The 800 bags will be safely stowed, and in time they will be added to a shipping container of all sorts of supplies heading to our Hope Kibuye team in Burundi. That container will be filled with medical supplies and equipment, things essential to the work at Hope Kibuye Hospital. And 6,400 crayons for the children of Kibuye Elementary School. Oh, and those 30 teacher kits, 20 from LPC, bound for the Kibuye Elementary School teachers. Continue reading →