You’ve likely heard the story of Ethan Couch, the 16-year old kid from Texas, convicted in the deaths of four people in a drunk-driving incident last June. Ethan and a group of friends had gone to a local Wal-Mart where they stole two cases of beer and then headed to Ethan’s house to drink and then on to the highways for a joyride in Ethan’s father’s F-350 pickup. Ethan was driving at speeds up to 70 MPH on the rural roads near Fort Worth and had a blood alcohol level of three times the legal limit. That’s when he plowed into a group of four people standing at the side of the road near a disabled car. All four were killed, including the driver of the broken down car and three people who had come to her aid, a mother and her teen-age daughter who were friends of the driver and had responded to her call for help and a local youth pastor on the way home from his son’s high school graduation ceremony who had stopped to see if he might be able to assist them. Two of the six passengers in the pickup were seriously injured, one is now permanently paralyzed. Continue reading →

Not everyone who comes to LPC asking receives. Many don’t. It’s one of the few things about my job that I don’t like. People call and occasionally they just stop by. Their needs are great and if they could just get a little help. We do our best to assess the situation and to respond faithfully. That’s the hard part. We never turn down anyone who wants some food from the Deacons Food Pantry. Our only rules have to do with how often you can come (once a week) and how much you can take (two bags and just one each of a few keys items). Thousands of cans and boxes, tons of food go in and out of the Food Pantry every year. No questions asked. Continue reading →

This is one of those years when the fourth Thursday in November and the fourth Sunday before Christmas are three days apart. Hardly have we recovered from our Thanksgiving Day feasts and family reunions than we light the first candle on the Advent Wreath. Maybe it is good that Advent comes so quickly, jarring our attention away from football and shopping and towards preparation and waiting.

In the tradition of the church year, of which Advent is the first season, we begin our preparations for the celebration of Jesus’ nativity not by a frenzied home decorating spree or fighting the mobs at the mall, but by remembering that the Feast of the Nativity, Christmas, marks the first coming of Christ – as a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger – and that Jesus promised a second coming, as well – bringing us to himself, “so that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). Continue reading →

One of the things bloggers and the National Enquirer have in common is over-the-top-headlines created to entice readers into opening their pages or buying the rag. I can hardly wait to find out what happened the night Jackie Kennedy told Marilyn Monroe where to go.

The truth is that C.S. Lewis did not save my life. But I would like to tell you about how this Oxford and Cambridge professor who died fifty years ago today changed my life and my understanding of life in profound ways.

Lewis was an English intellectual of academic note who is best remembered as a Christian apologist and thinker whose fiction (The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy and more) and Christian reflections (The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, Surprised by Joy, The Four Loves and many more) make a joyful and persuasive case for what he called “Mere Christianity” – the title of what may be his most famous work. Continue reading →

I’m not sure I need to say much more. The teenage son tells his dad that he’ll be singing a solo at the Christmas concert. The woman tells her friend at church that she’ll be alone in the waiting room while her husband is in surgery. “I’ve just been fired. I’m heading home and don’t know what I’ll do,” the man tells his buddy from the small group Bible study.

Is there any question but that “I’ll be there” beats “I’ll see what I can do”?

Whether they are the explicit promises we make at baptisms, weddings, ordinations, commissionings and new member receptions, or the implicit promises that bind us together as friends and fellow travelers on the journey of faith, promises are the substance of the ties that bind us together. Continue reading →