Neighbors in the Valley

I wasn't always a believer. I wasn't always thirsty for the Word and hungry for His wisdom. For many years I was an atheist in pursuit of validation. I sought earthly wisdom, and egotistically preached against the faith of others. I thought my own understanding to be greater, and felt sure that I was saving people from the ignorant oppression of religion. I declared the church a fraud, and denied God and His will. I was proudly lost with no desire to be found, and I am forever ashamed of the result. While many, I'm sure, were more annoyed than affected by my rantings and ramblings, I know of several, and I'm sure more, who fully stumbled at the blasting of my self-righteous trumpet.   One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.      Proverbs 12:26 (ESV)   Since turning away from that life, I have done more than my share of soul searching, begging forgiveness for my misdeeds and...

Everyone who has read the gospels has read these verses. Few would disagree with the basic concept, and all would likely claim to hold to the command itself; but are we really? To even call oneself Christian would require adhering to the first: love the Lord your God with all your heart. But loving our neighbors  can be a struggle, right? I would argue that we cannot do one without the other. These two cannot be separated, no matter your theology, creed, or doctrine. Who is the Lord your God? He is the Creator of all things which have been created, with particular pride, the creator of man. Who is your neighbor? Well, look to the story of the Samaritan for Jesus's full answer, but simply defined: anyone you interact with. But more than fellow man, your neighbor is the image bearer of God Almighty. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;  male and female he created them. " Genesis 1:27 ESV What does that really say? We ar...

Over the weekend, in the sweltering heat of this summer, my family had a little excitement in our garden. A fledgling robin dropped from the massive maple tree which overlooks the garden in our back yard. When we looked for the nest, we spotted it on a branch about 50 feet up, much too high to reach with any ladder we had available. Now the garden is about thirty by fifteen feet, though by no means the largest section of the yard. It's surrounded by a simple chicken wire fence, held up by studded T-posts.  Now the interesting thing about this bird's landing is that it came down just inches inside the fence. It was spotted by my wife just after the rest of us (my mother, two sisters, and daughter of 3) had come in from the heat. It sat, hungry, in the most exposed corner of the garden. The sun was beaming down, cooking the yard, and this little robin sat in the hottest, open corner the garden allowed. Our first reaction to this was to get a box or something and take ...

A righteous man will seek to imitate Christ, when and only when he is certain he will fail. When I first experience the saving grace of my Lord Christ Jesus, now ten years ago, I grabbed onto the scriptures with all my mind could muster. I studied the expectations and commands listed among the pages of the Holy Book, and I desperately tried to apply these to my daily. I purchased other books on basic theology and breathed in the words of great men before me, in hopes of pushing all that was evil out of my mind by filling it to the brim with the knowledge of God and His centuries of followers. One such purchase was "The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a Kempis. A classic devotional on which to meditate, but not one I should have been reading at such an early point in my faith. When I first picked up the book, which I have failed to read again in the last 8 or so years, I took it at title value. I was looking to do just as the name suggests; imitate Christ Jesus as closely as I...

I have been avoiding the race issues lately,  but they are beyond the point of ignoring anymore. They are obnoxiously present, and overly exhausted. But they are not the problem. Racism is not THE problem. It is a symptom, like a headache. And like a headache, it won't disappear until the underlying issue is addressed. People think they are addressing it by protesting in the streets, erasing history and monuments, burning cities, creating lawlessness in place of civility. This is not only asinine, its counterproductive.  Racism isn't an American thing, it's not a white thing, it's not a privileged thing. It's a human thing. It's in every culture, in every race group, in every country, on every continent on the planet. It's always  been in all of those places and peoples for the existence of civilization. Right now the world is treating this headache by yelling at it, and drawing more attention to it. Over analyzing and relabelling it, as if defining it as a...