LP's LampPost

I was sent an email from a friend last week that contained the story of a football game between Gainesville State High School and Faith Christian High School in Texas.  I have seen several great stories of compassion in the sports world but I'm not sure any of them tops this one.  I encourage you to take about 5 minutes and watch the news story here . Considering that story, I have a few questions. Which side of the ball are you on?  If you feel like you are on the Gainesville State side where no one cheers for you, I would like to tell you something about Christmas.  The baby in the manger was God in the flesh.  One of the overwhelming messages of the life of Jesus is that God is for you.  He knows your name and really wants the best for you.  More than just dividing His fans in half, God Himself chose to break into our world to rescue us from our past mistakes and give us a future.  Like the boys in Gainseville State School, we have to make ...

I serve as a pastor.  I lead our youth group.  I parent 3 children.  I think a lot about how to communicate principles for decision making that are not just "when A happens, you pick B."  At least, I should think a lot about it!  I was up late last night as a result of these kinds of thoughts.  We all are exposed to different environments, saddled with different challenges, and face different choices.  What rules or guidelines will help all of us make the right choice all the time?  Even if I won't choose the right thing all the time, could I at least get some help in knowing what the right thing is? It's tempting here to say something like, "Well just do what the Bible says all the time" or, "Just ask WWJD?"  Here's the problem, I have read the Bible all the way through a couple of times and I haven't found a verse that gives me the script to correct a sensitive child's behavior in a way that let's him know the gravity of the er...

As a child, the brick house on the hill. Moniteau County, Walker Township. On the farm, outside of McGirk (where?!) Not so much the house as the land. Teenager: two girls occupy our home, too. Foster kids, is this home for them? One returns to her home. One stays through college. Still, is this home for her?  Hard to tell. College: "On my own!"  Cool! . . . Not home though. I go "home" on weekends and for summers. A thought is peeking through the clouds, Maybe I was wrong as a child. Maybe home is not the house or the land. Sure feels like home to see Mom and Dad (and Brother?) Her:  Things have changed! On top of the world, looking at spectacular, I want to show . . . her. Why her?  Hmmm. The question.  She said yes! Yep, I was wrong as a child. We make home, she and I. Home is the people not the place. The place is nice, filled with memories (laundry, too). If the people move, so do I. The place becomes a memory. Home moves wi...

While watching the Today show a little while back I was caught by a phrase from Salman Rushdie during an interview with Matt Lauer.  In the interview (you can see it here ), Rushdie opines that we are living in an age of outrage and that "people seem to define themselves by their outrage."  Incidentally, he also describes the internet movie at the center of this controversy in an almost lyrical way as "an outrageous, disgraceful, little malevolent thing."  Poetry. The legitimacy of this outrage on the part of Muslim residents of North Africa and the Middle East is not the discussion I wish to engage here.  How we, as privileged westerners, tend to define ourselves by outrage is the discussion I'd like to take a stab at. Some will object to my use of privileged but only the narrowest of viewpoints will support any other assessment of middle-class citizens of the USA.  People who do not worry about the existence or timing of their next meal and have a dry, tem...

I recently read an interesting interview in Christianity Today (you can check it out here ).  In short, the interviewee is summarizing his research project and book which indicates children have a tendency to believe in a greater power or higher being from very early ages.  A couple of insights that caught my eye were that this belief is not just naivety but that children begin to understand several fundamental truths very early (e.g., mother's love, the constancy of physical laws) and that children are not "unformed blobs that can be shaped into anything we like." These things resonate with my own experience with my kids.  At age 7, my daughter asked me if we, as Christians, should love Satan?  We are, after all, commanded to "love our enemies" by Jesus.  Why have I never thought of that?  At the occasion of one of his first pimples, my son wrestled with what was created by God and what are effects of the fall of man.  (The Cooks believe pimples and...

I had a bunch of fun last night.  Sunday nights are almost always fun for me because I get to team preach with our senior pastor at Union Hill.  I could try to explain it to you but you really have to see it to get it.  We agree on a passage ahead of time but we don't compare notes or script the delivery.  Last night was particularly enjoyable because in preaching through the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) we arrived at Jesus's short instruction on divorce (Matt 5:31-32).  This is not Jesus's only teaching on marriage and divorce but it did allow us to talk about our attitude about God's rules and how we picture God because of them.  There wasn't time to say nearly all I wanted (never is!) so . . . . First, a little background for those who didn't hear the sermon last night.  In my observation, the church (not just preachers but the whole church) has shied away from talking about what God says about marriage and divorce in recent years.  In my l...

I recently had a series of chicken-related firsts.  I made my first visit to a Chick-fil-A restaurant (how did I get this old without having done that!?!) and I bought the first spicy guacamole chicken club sold at the Wendy's on Missouri Boulevard in Jefferson City.  I thought the second one would be a bigger deal than it was.  No shiny hat, sticker, free meal, or anything.  The sandwich was pretty good, though.  Anyway, it's the Chick-fil-A visit that I was so impressed by.  Maybe not everyone knows that Chick-fil-A is run by a Christian owner and is closed on Sunday's because of it.  What impressed me was the service which I would like to think is also influenced by the Christian principles of the owner.  I should mention that my visit was with 9 high-school and middle-school students from our church and one other adult.  We, the adults, were significantly outnumbered but we prevailed in the end!  Back to lunch.  The server was e...

I'm not very far into this blogging adventure and yet several of the entries have, at least, touched on the problems inherent in groups.  We exist in groups all the time and some are more pleasant than others.  We choose close friends, in part, because of the agreement we have on various issues and the comfort we feel in their presence.  On the other end, most of us have experienced the feeling illustrated in job placement services' commercials :  being the only sane human in a room full of barely trained monkeys.  All to ooften this feeling is at a job we don't feel we can afford to lose and are, therefore, trapped.   Our feelings about our church usually fall somewhere in between these two extremes.  When other church members (or pastors!) seem closer to the barely trained monkeys, some wonder, "Why do I put up with this?" Over the years, many have protested that we don't need church.  "My relationship with Jesus is personal so Jesus and ...

"No man is an island."  So says John Donne in Meditation 17 and experience proves him correct.  We exist in groups.  The most introverted among us still have a select few that we invest in and are deeply connected with.  Donne proposed a universal bond among humans that some have and will continue to debate but, for today, it is enough to say that no one exists entirely alone.  As a result, a tremendous amount of our time and effort is invested in one relationship or another.  The success of facebook, texting, and various other social functions is ample evidence. As a previous post mentioned, conflict is an inevitable function of groups.  One exception would be the situation addressed by a quote my son shared with me this weekend.  "If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking."  Maybe we could adjust that to "only one is thinking."  Not all conflict is the emotionally charged variety however.  Several times in a day, a...

I am reading a pretty fascinating book.  10 Books That Screwed Up the World and 5 others That Didn't Help by Benjamin Wiker takes Professor Wikers own list of the world's (or, at least, Western Culture's) 10 worst books and summarizes them to show their detrimental effect on society.  A common thread of the offending books is that they present a vision of utopia and, in more or less detail, a plan for how to bring about this utopian vision.  Even casual students of modern history will recognize the names Hitler and Lenin who both make the list.  Professor Wiker presents an interesting case for how these universally reviled figures, among others, stand in the flow of a philosophy developed by others rather than as unique, evil figures who somehow made themselves.  The thing that struck me today, however, was how we relatively mild-mannered contemporary westerners tend toward the same method for bringing about our own happiness. The common element of the method...

People all over the world, throughout history, and from many faith backgrounds have acknowledged the genius of the man Jesus.  For the record, I believe Jesus to be more than a man; He is the God-man, the unique Son of God, and the only hope for people to find peace with the one, true God.  My point however, does not depend on you believing the same as I do.  In my experience, Jesus' practical wisdom is displayed, perhaps better than anywhere else, in His teaching on handling conflict.  Jesus' teaching goes to both the offender and the offended.  Jesus instructs the offender to go to the offended as soon as possible to make it right (Matt 5:23-24).  Don't wait till someone tells you that you have hurt their feelings.  Go when you have even a suspicion of trouble brewing.  It is far better to show concern over your relationship with a friend when it is unnecessary than to ignore a situation that needs attention.  Jesus also gives a simple ...

     LampPost is a title I have used a few times in other places but it is more than just an opportunity to use my initials in the title!  I am a big fan of C.S. Lewis and, like lots of others, my introduction to him was through "The Chronicles of Narnia."  In "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" the lamp post is a marker between two worlds, Narnia and England.  It one of the first things the Pevensie children see on entering Narnia and the marker of their return to their world.  Similarly, I would love the things I write, indeed my life, to be a marker for people in this world to see that there is another, grander world waiting to be explored.  I heard recently by way of a sermon on the radio that the Celts would refer to certain days as "thin places."  That is, times when the divider between the physical world and the spiritual world was thin.  Halloween was such a day.  The pastor (who I wish I could credit but have now f...

I have finally thrown myself over the edge on blogging.  I was encouraged by a friend, Jerry Gamblin, so some blame should reside with him! There seems to be a war on the word "religion" these days. Let me say first that I agree with the concept of what most are saying about the difference between religion and relationship with Jesus.  I just think that there is a false dichotomy being set up.  Mostly, it seems to me a matter of order. If we try to use religious practice to gain God's approval without meeting Jesus, then all the negative comments about religion are right on. However, meeting Jesus will cause us to be religious people. The big theological word is sanctification.  This is the process of God making us more and more like Him.  It happens between when we first accept Christ and when we meet Him face-to-face in Heaven.  James 1:26-27 give the contrast between false and true religion. Being simply religious, without a relationship wit...