I hope the NSA doesn’t make its finding about me public. It knows too much, and the report would not be flattering.

This morning’s newsfeeds are full (still) of the NSA spying scandal. The president has come up with some proposals that seek to balance national security interests and personal privacy concerns. Apparently the civil libertarians are not buying the balance. The tilt is towards snooping. One way or another Big Brother is listening in on our phone calls and reading our emails and texts.

To be sure, this is an important policy issue. The cynic in me says that whatever new policies are written somebody somewhere will be able to listen in or read over my shoulder whether I want them to or not. I don’t particularly like the idea, but I am pretty sure it is reality. Continue reading →

Christian welcome is more than sliding down the pew to make room for a visitor

A couple days after Christmas I received an email from a good friend and colleague who had left our area last spring to accept a new call serving a congregation in the Midwest. It was great to hear from him. He had a favor to ask. A young man in his congregation – 23 and a recent Stanford graduate excited about serving God wherever God would send him – was heading to Brazil in January. He sensed a call to Brazil, even though he’d never been there, and wanted to get a flavor of the country, and, especially, God’s people there. Doug, the young man, is smart, a mathematician and a musician, self-taught a nearly fluent in five languages including Brazilian Portuguese, but he had no contacts in Brazil and no itinerary other than a round trip ticket to and from São Paulo for a month of who knows what. Might I make some contacts among my Brazilian friends on his behalf? Continue reading →

May he grant you your heart’s desire
and fulfill all your plans!
May we shout for joy over your salvation,
and in the name of our God set up our banners!
May the Lord fulfill all your petitions! (Psalm 20:4-5, ESV)

Earlier in the week I offered some reflections on the past year in our life together at LPC. It was a good year. And in case I need to say it again, what a joy and a privilege it is to be called to serve and to live life with such a wonderfully faithful people as those God has called together at LPC to be a part of his amazing family of faith. Thanks be to God for Langhorne Presbyterian Church and her people. Continue reading →

First things first. They say that “auld lang syne” is literally the “old long since.” Of course the old long since is best celebrated in the Robert Burns poem of the same name and the song version of the poem. Thanks to Guy Lombardo, the tune of Auld Lang Syne has become synonymous with New Year’s Eve and our farewell to the old year as it becomes the old long since.

But before 2013 is the old long since, maybe we should pause for just a moment and give it its due.

As far year-end reviews go, I am still partial to columnist Dave Barry whose 2013 edition lives up to my expectations.

I’ll let the humorist cover the world and the nation. How about LPC and our life together?  I think it was a good year. The unofficial number crunching shows us ending the year with a modest budget surplus, with worship attendance and membership up, with growing commitment to mission beyond our doors and study and nurture within our walls. Continue reading →

A Fascinating New Poll Shows That Americans Are Losing Faith In God, the headline reads. The fascinating poll may be new, but the trend is not.  For those of us in the “faith” business it is a disconcerting trend and troubling, perhaps in the same way that the decline in beer drinking might be troubling to the folks at Budweiser. But this may be more than a loss of market.

The headline could simply have said, Americans are Losing Faith. Fascinating or not, all the polls show that we are losing faith, that is, our ability to trust. We have lost almost all our faith in the Congress and much of our faith in the president. We don’t trust big business or big government. Lawyers live with the used cars salesmen among the other bottom feeders we do not trust. We don’t have much faith in the value of a college education and even science has become so politicized that you can’t have much faith science, or at least not in scientists. The fact of the matter is, we are losing faith in ourselves Continue reading →