I guess I just don’t have to worry about how history will judge me so long as am more concerned that I will, in time, hear a righteous judge say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into my joy.” 

My undergraduate degree was in history because I liked it. It had little career potential then and less now. We probably need more history majors. Maybe if we had more history majors we’d be less obsessed with the false notion that history always has a right side and a wrong side, and that we are somehow capable of knowing which side is right and which side is wrong as the future becomes the present. Continue reading →

#Deusémuitobom!
#Godisverygood! 

The eyes of the world are on Brazil this month.  Even a few Americans are paying attention.  It’s time for World Cup Soccer, football, as the rest of the world calls it. Futebol is how those in the host country say the word. We’re still in the opening rounds, but defending champion Spain is already finished, the lowly regarded Team USA has won a game, and the Brazilians are very anxious about their team after a 0-0 draw with Mexico. Continue reading →

The Christian life is a life of sabotage. Defeating and undoing the system put in place by the enemy occupation. 

Today is the Seventieth Anniversary of D-Day: June 6, 1944, the landing of Allied troops on the beaches of Normandy in northern France. Eleven months later the nightmare of Hitler’s Nazi tyranny would come to an end.

Like most days we vow never to forget, the memory of D-Day has faded in the nation’s mind. While conspiracy theorists and contemporary political partisans left and right would retell the events of D-Day according to their own sensibilities, the story line remains simple and compelling. Most of Europe was captive to the monstrous tyranny of fascism and hate. The D-Day landings began the liberation of the continent. Young Brits, Canadians and Americans marshaled courage and subdued their own fears to storm the beaches that day. Heroes were made. Over 150,000 troops landed on D-Day itself with an Allied death toll of around 4,000. Continue reading →

Whether you live in the Scottish highlands, the Dutch lowlands, the Alps of Switzerland long ago, or in the modern suburbs of Philadelphia, part of growing up is figuring out where you came from, who you are, and where you’re headed.

What can I tell you about Confirmation as we come again to Confirmation Sunday? I love it.

The practice is old and as old as the Reformed Tradition and older. Confirmation not just fit, but helped define the rhythms and the seasons of life in the villages of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Scotland and the towns of Holland and of Calvin’s Geneva. Infants were baptized as children of the covenant, parents and churches leaning hard on God’s grace as they raised their children as Christians who, in God’s time, would have faith quickened in their hearts by the work of the Holy Spirit in them. At an appropriate age, twelve to fifteen, the children of any given village, town or canton would be catechized, that is trained in the content of Christian faith and then given an opportunity to claim that faith as their own. Continue reading →

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 →