Life by Grace Alone

As a child Saturday mornings would find me with at least some of my siblings in front of the television set. The Lone Ranger Show and the Roy Rogers Show were 2 of our favorites. Even if you came into the room late it was easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys. The bad guys wore black hats and the good guys wore white hats. Nothing ever blurred the obvious line between black and white. No foul weather or foul fights turned any hats gray. Those distinctions were fine for children's television but not for real life. The black hats versus the white hats became one of the relics of the past as many t.v. shows and movies began to often focus on more complex characters. Even though this part of the media has made this transition, another media has not. We now live in a society where many people reject at least in part the idea of absolutes. That seems true until there is a shooting especially a school shooting. As soon as a shooting occurs we are inundated with pronouncements a...

Recently someone posted a quote on facebook. It went something like this. "Until God opens a door, praise him in the hallway." That sounded so good. There are so many situations we find ourselves in where we feel stuck in the nether world between our now treasured ordinary blessed life and the possibility of a horrible or at least radically different set of circumstances. You know the type of situation I'm talking about. 1)Your husband has received word that his company is transferring him to a different location. One possibility is a place near your favorite relatives and the other location is in another country. 2)You are waiting for the result of a medical test. One diagnosis could involve painful prolonged procedures, and the other possibility could be handled with a mild medication. 3) You are pregnant. The doctor says there could be a birth defect that is very serious and perhaps could  result in the death of the child or if there is a problem it may be only mino...

I remember when Steve was the first pastor of his first church in California, we had no children and so it was fairly easy for me to go to presbytery meetings with him. I quickly began to pick out the pastor's wives who had been given by their husbands strict guidelines about what to say and not say if asked about his ministry. (Do say, "We have someone new every week." Don't say, " Our visitors never come back") Over the years Steve has developed a habit of calling or writing notes to a number of pastors he thinks might need to be encouraged. We never talked about it very much and he only mentioned this in passing. After ministering to churches in California, Nebraska, Vermont, and Virginia he is now our presbytery's regional home missionary, in charge of starting new churches. Although he began some of his duties while still the pastor of our church, he did not do the job full time until Oct. 1. On Nov.30 he was to be installed in his new office offi...