In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Fly on the Wall.”
Today the Daily Post has asked us, If you could be a “fly on the wall” anywhere and at any time in history, where and when would you choose?
My mind is consumed by thoughts of Easter just now. It feels most days that I am eating, sleeping and breathing the upcoming Good Friday and Easter services. Truly, the opportunity to be a part of commemorating these two world-changing events is one of the great privileges of my life. Every year they leave me tired but satisfied with a sense of having touched something transcendent.
In a world that is consumed and enamoured with flash-in-the-pan fads it is comforting to have such a tangible connection with something that bridges our human condition with eternity. This celebration is the closest I can come to understanding the events of those days but if I could I would go back and walk that ancient Passover weekend to gain a deeper appreciation of what God has done for us.
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The Daily Post: It’s Fresh and Exciting
In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Fresh.”
The challenge is to find something FRESH today. I thought about bringing out pictures of this year’s fresh fallen snow; But honestly snow is not making me feel very fresh these days, just tired; So I decided to go with a fresh spring motif
Keukenhof Gardens, Lisse , The Netherlands
Fresh GreenOh! I am longing for these days!
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Walls Of Our Own Making
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Wall.”
This week the Daily Post has asked us to show our walls. Here are my thoughts…
Some walls are made to protect us.
Other walls are meant to project a façade we want the world to see.
All the while walls give us a place to hide our our secrets, our hidden hostilities, our issues.
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Britain Abroad
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Study Abroad.”
Today the post has asked us this question, “If you were asked to spend a year living in a different location, where would you choose and why?”
I would like to spend a year travelling and studying in England, Wales and Scotland. I have been to both Ireland and the Netherlands. Great Britain stands deeply connected to both of those places.
I did spend a week preaching in the region around Liverpool in the ’90’s but I would like to go back and spend some time studying the Welsh revivals which in many ways gave rise to my own fellowship of Pentecostalism in America. I would like to visit the places where the Methodist and Presbyterian revivals had hold.
I’d love to spend some time at Oxford and return to the church in Liverpool where I preached before the turn of the Millenium. To have a whole year to study the faith of this ancient land would be really neat indeed!
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Orange Suits Me
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Orange you glad it’s photo challenge time?.”
I love Orange!
Doolin, Ireland
Keukenhof Gardens, Lisse , The Netherlands
Botenmakersstraat, Zaandam, The Netherlands
Zaandyke, The Netherlands
King CakeIt’s strange I had to go to Europe to find it!
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It’s All Work. It’s All Play
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “First Light.”
The Daily Post asked…Remember when you wrote down the first thought you had this morning? Great. Now write a post about it.
There is this struggle I have had for years as a minister. All the areas of my life overlap. The boundaries between work and play, professional and personal are muddied by the rivers of life. It is so hard to see where one thing ends and another begins. I suppose it doesn’t help that I like my job most of the time. I suppose it also doesn’t help that I define being a pastor as a calling (something I am) rather than as a job (something I do). Finally I guess it really doesn’t help that almost all my relationships are marked or affected in some way by the church.
Here are some examples of my conundrum
1. C.cada- Work or play? I enjoy creating. I enjoy being with creative people. C.cada is a work of the church I oversee.
2. Going to dinner with friends from the church- I am J but I am also Pastor at those dinners. They are fun. I enjoy them immensely. I am still Pastor. I am still on. I know that’s more me than them. Still I don’t seem to be able to shut this pastor thing off…ever.
3. Family Skate Day- I don’t go for the skating. I go for the food (which I really love by the way). I go because I am on staff at the church.
I write a lot about this in my journals and I wonder am I ever just a pastor or am I ever just J? It’s all work. It’s all play. And maybe just maybe that’s OK.
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Going Back
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “The Transporter.”
The Daily Post has asked us to…Tell about a sensation — a taste, a smell, a piece of music — that transports you back to childhood.
As a child I spent nearly every Friday night at my grandmother’s house on Packard’s Pond in Orange MA. The house was a converted camp resting in the shadow of Tully Mountain. My grandparents had settled there as they neared retirement. It was all pine trees and mountain air.
On Friday nights my father would take me and my sister over to a ham dinner and then on Saturday my grandmother would wash clothes and do the grocery shopping around Saturday morning cartoons (my shows) and Saturday afternoon bowling (my grandfather’s shows). She often threw open all the windows on Saturday (except in the dead of winter) to air the camp out.
To this day the scent of a pine candle (the smell of the lake air), the smell of cilantro (the scent of clean laundry) or the fragrance of cloves (a cooking ham dinner) drive me back to the days of my boyhood.
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No Thanks Gatlinburg!
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “No, Thanks.”
The Daily Post has asked us…Is there a place in the world you never want to visit? Where, and why not?
I guess it is not that I never wanted to visit Gatlinburg. In fact I wanted to and did visit this spot tucked away in the Smoky Mountains. It’s a place I never want to visit again!
We arrived on a Tuesday and were slated to visit until Thursday. The hotel we were in offered a suite. It backed up onto the mountain and as we tracked around to the mountain- side of the building where our room was, the mountain itself imposed such a shadow that we lost all the light even though it was midday. Walking across the second story porch to our room was possible only because the night lights were on 24/7. That was creepy enough but when we saw the cardboard sign tacked to the railing that read “Don’t feed the bars.” written in black magic marker, we realized we had left civilization completely behind.
Our room smelled like hornet spray. Dried spaghetti stuck to the walls in the kitchenette, and when I went to wash the dust of the road off I discovered the shower curtain was filled with cigarette burns. Good golly! How addicted does a person have to be to smoke in the shower?!?
We opened the TV console for the kids but the TV was gone. Somebody had put it in the fireplace behind the decorative grate. I ask you why? Why would someone do that?
Needless to say we did not stay the two nights. When I checked out the next morning the lady managing the front desk had a giant wolf-dog with her at the counter. I had to step over the creature to cancel my reservation for the night. I thought I might lose my leg as I stepped back over the dog to leave the building.
My wife and I thought we might redeem the mini vaca by taking a gondola ride up the side of the mountain. But pine beetles had infested the forest leading up to the skating rink at the summit called Oberammergau. Our trip up the mountain consisted of lots of scenery of dead pine trees and $7.00 hamburgers at the top.
Maybe it was just a perfect storm of bad luck. But seriously once is enough for me!
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An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Race the Clock.”
So the daily post has given us this assignment today…
Here’s the title of your post: “An Offer I Couldn’t Refuse.”
Set a timer for ten minutes, and write it. Go!
Several years ago I was asked to come and sing for a group of people at a local visiting nurses dayhab unit. I went and sang.
They liked me and so they invited me back. They liked me the second time and so they asked me if I would begin coming once a month. I agreed and went to sing hymns on a monthly basis and did this for two years.
Over the course of those two years my schedule began to fill out exponentially. It was becoming harder and harder to keep the commitment to my monthly hymn-sing at the VNA and so I approached God about it.
“God you know how busy I am.” I complained, “This hymn-sing is nice but I am not seeing any real fruit from it and I just can’t justify continuing when there are so many other more productive pursuits I could be involved in. God I am going to quit after this next concert. But if you want me to stay you will have to do something to make me stay.”
I went to the concert, set up my piano and sang my heart out feeling fully liberated that at the end of the day I would be handing in my walking papers.
We were about three-quarters of the way through my set when suddenly one of the elderly ladies in the room stopped the concert and asked, “Hey you are a pastor right?”
“Yes I am. ” I replied (they had been calling me Pastor J since day one but God chose this day to make it all sink in).
“You know most of us in this room don’t get to go to church anymore.” She said. “Would it be possible for you to bring us communion?”
The activities director blanched a little. But I had to ask, “Is that possible?”
I fully expected an unequivocal “No!”
What I got from her was a, “Let’s vote.”
The vote was taken and everybody wanted communion.
It was an offer I could not refuse. I had my next marching orders from God. Today I have a team of three which brings communion to 35 individuals at this venue. We started another off-campus service with another team two towns away and last month two of us started bringing music to a third day program two miles up the road from the VNA where it all started.
You never know where fruit from ministry is going to pop up!
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His Story
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Do or Die.”
The Daily Post has told us…
You have three hundred words to justify the existence of your favorite person, place, or thing. Failure to convince will result in it vanishing without a trace. Go!
My first love is Christ. It is for Him I live because He has died for me. So great was His love for me that He gave His life for me while I was still His enemy. I suppose there are some who would say that what needs justifying is not God’s love but His very existence. I think if the reality of God is established then The expression of His love goes without question.
Here’s the thing, I cannot prove the existence of God. I do not need to. He is quite capable of defending His own honor and proving His own reality without me. In fact were I to turn and disparage His existence He would only become more real.
Voltaire declared that within 100 years of his life the gospel and God would fade into the shadowy world of fairytale. His house became a center for Bible distribution. Jesus’ reality and reputation has withstood the onslaught of detractors and dishonorable supporters without becoming tarnished or faded in the least. He is the Alpha and he shall be the Omega. HE has already died and resurrected so nothing anybody says or does will change or remove His place from the history of mankind. It is after all HIS STORY!
Lillie-Put 