Dancing in the Grey
Have you ever done the right thing the wrong way? Or, have you ever done something wrong—even sinful, as followers of the way of Jesus would say—but for the right reasons? We sometimes find ourselves on complicated moral terrain, and when we do, perhaps we wonder how to weigh our choices. Consider the true story behind the movie Schindler's list. As a Nazi party member credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews from the Holocaust, Oskar Schindler was nothing if not a complex personality. To save those lives, he had to lie many times. He did what many of you—what I—would consider a wrong thing for the right reasons. Yet, any of us would unlikely have him do it differently. I do not know how many of you relate to his morally tenuous conduct, but every one of us—most notably me—has been deceptive. You have shaded the truth to achieve even a noble outcome. We have all done the wrong thing for what we believed were the right reasons.
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Facing and Embracing Fear
Have you ever been motivated by fear? Has that fear ever motivated you to do something potentially hazardous or ruinous? There is a great film based on a novel called The Human Stain that I am quite possibly about to ruin for you, even as I commend it to you. In it, the main character, played by Anthony Hopkins, finds himself trapped in a prison of his own making. He is an English professor and the chair of the English Department at a reasonably prestigious school. He spent his career cultivating that department, particularly fighting to make space for African-American people to serve as faculty members in the department and at the school.
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Disempowering Shame
How do you deal with trauma or tragedy? The question I place before you is an important one, both in light of your life pre-twenty-twenty—because “life under the sun”comes with challenges simple and life-altering—and in light of everything we have navigated as people since twenty-twenty alone—r.i.p. Kobe, civility, security, financial predictability etc. Unfortunately, trauma and tragedy can push us to do things we never imagined we would do, or at the very least, something that seemed far outside our character. And when that happens, the associated shame can be almost as crippling as the original event or events themselves.
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Legacy | Roadblocks
Recently I heard a powerful story about a beautiful vision carried by an unlikely candidate—a six-year-old little girl—Hattie May Wiatt.
As only a six-year-old would, Hattie May brought a problem to Russell H. Conwell, Grace's pastor at her church. The children's Sunday school was overcrowded.
He was delighted by her initiative and told her that one day they would have buildings big enough to allow everyone to attend without crowding. She replied, ‘I hope you will. It is so crowded I am afraid to go there alone.’ He replied, ‘When we get the money, we will construct one large enough to get all the children in.’ It was a wonderful tête-à-tête between a concerned congregant and her pastor.
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Legacy | God Owns. I Manage.
Believe it or not, I was not always a pastor. I have lived many lives—coaching, professional sports, high school English teacher, marketing and sales, and Financial Services. When I look back over the last twenty-plus years, I certainly see God's hand in my journey, and I can even see now things that He was teaching me about Him, myself and others when I was working in so many divergent fields. But no occupation taught me more about God and my heart than when I—very briefly—worked in Financial Services at Waddell and Reed.
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Dream Again. (Pt. 2)
There is a great deal in this world that we often delight in more than we do God. I know that to be the case for myself; forgive me if I am speaking out of turn concerning you. The reality is when we delight in lesser things over God, our hearts and minds get cloudy, and we cannot even rightly discern what it is we desire.
Inversely, when God is our great delight, and we embrace the wisdom of David's words, then either God will fulfil those dreams we have, or our hearts will shift toward even greater dreams because our desires will be more God-directed rather than me-directed.
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