Sometimes I can have a good time all by myself. I can get away from everything and everybody and enjoy the peace and quiet that only being alone can bring. I meditate or pray or read scripture or read a book. It is a time of renewal and refreshment as I relax in the Lord and enjoy God’s presence in the stillness and quiet of the day.
There is a difference, however, between being alone and being lonely.
A plague is being visited on all of us, but not evenly.
On May 22, 1917, in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, a mob lynched Ell Persons. Reports indicated that 5,000 people showed up to participate or watch. Persons was tied to a log, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. According to newspaper reports, his death was slow and agonizing. The crowd cheered as the smell of burnt flesh filled the air. After he died, they mutilated his body.
Piercing night ascending
descending sky to ground our light footfalls
in fluid motion pass through air make
no sound No spiral or criss-cross flights
but one uninterrupted series of stairs
ten thousand climbing angels in glowing white
ten thousand more trodding down
down from heaven’s height
from the foot of God’s own throne
right down to a stone a shaken scoundrel’s
Peter Gomes, gone too soon, was an extraordinary preacher who served as minister of Memorial Church at Harvard University for almost 40 years. I once heard him joyfully confess his frequent response to inquiries concerning his well-being: “I flourish!” Gomes didn’t just answer with the usual “Fine, how are you?” His “I flourish!” I am sure caught many people unfamiliar with the ultralively Gomes off guard.
Maybe Christianity’s best appeal is its courage in the face of all that wounds, rips, and ravages.
Like many mourners on the front lines of the pandemic, Mary’s body is weighed down with grief.
Super Bowl champions are known for following up their victories with a television commercial announcing that their next stop is Disney World. Amazing experience deserves amazing experience. This is strikingly different from what Jesus does after his victory over death: he takes a walk. How anticlimactic. How mundane. And yet how so like Jesus.
“They have taken away my lord . . . and I don’t know
where they have put him.” —John 20:13
She knew these things: a body doesn’t walk.
Soldiers can’t be trusted. Gossips will talk.
She made her way there in the early dark.
She knew the stories—Noah and the Ark,
Jonah and the whale, David and the stone,
the things a man can accomplish alone.
Even so, she couldn’t quite conceive
how a dead god could just up and leave
There's more than one way to taste and see the goodness of God.