The Narrowing Road

So Abraham gets a promise from God to be the father of a great nation. So he and his wife (who is also his half-sister) wait around to get pregnant and get this thing started. Years go by. Abraham isn’t so studly anymore and Sarah, although cute for her age, has no hope of childbearing.  So here they sit around the breakfast table wondering how to help God out. Sarah says Abraham should just go have a baby with Hagar, a servant woman. Abraham drums his fingers on the table, trying not to look too interested, but gets up shrugging his shoulders and says “If you say so, dear” and wastes no time getting Hagar pregnant. Which, to no one’s surprise, really bothers Sarah. She’s disgusted with herself, describing herself as “worn-out” (Gen 18:11) with a guffaw when angelic visitors tell her that when they visit her next year she’ll have son. “Yeah, right”.  But she does! Little Isaac. One boy to fulfill the promise of descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven.  Isaac and Rebeka (a cousin

 The Cancer Starter Pack By Joel Shults F*#% Cancer T shirt. Check GoFundMe site. Check Light Blue prostate cancer support ribbon frame for Facebook profile. Check Start My Cancer Journey blog. Check Actually, I'm doing none of those (with the slight deviation on the blog thing, since this is one). But I don't intend to do a play by play as some do. And I'm not criticizing those who do that because I often read them and they have a lot of value. Mostly, I'm writing this for me to look back on in a year or two and to help myself navigate an uncomfortable new territory. The discomfort is not that I have cancer, but what kind of person I should be now that the Big C is trying to define who I am.  I resent the invasion. I have submitted myself to other forces before as a  soldier, police officer, and follower of Jesus but to be forced to submit to a cancer-fighting lifestyle is insulting to my existential integrity. The first issue, in my mind, is disclosure. Really, how ma

I, and many like me, had the great Providential privilege of growing up with a wonderful church family. My parents began attending a small mission church in my hometown of Rolla, Missouri that has now grown to be a large congregation with a lot of square footage on its campus. I had wonderful teachers and leaders whom I knew cared about me and led me as I grew to become more involved in ministry and leadership. As a member of the baby-boom generation, I was part of the tide of growth in evangelical Christianity spurred by population growth, post WW2 patriotism linked with Protestantism, and media reach of Billy Graham and others. It's tempting to make this a rail against the shortsightedness and self-righteousness of contemporary church growth experts who scoff at that model (and who are now replicating the suburban storefront praise band cookie cutter non-denom monosyllabic named church plants that were once so revolutionary and counter-Baptist-cultural). But I won't. What

One of my favorite gospel songs is Sweet Beulah Land in which we sing “ I'm kind of homesick for a country to which I've never been before” referring, of course, to our heavenly home.  Many Christians are longing now for the America that was founded by people longing for religious freedom and formed in a revolution promoted by people of faith. It is a country that no one has ever seen and has never existed.  The America of 1776 was a mess of slave holders, British loyalists, unskilled soldiers, and determined patriots longing for independence from England but necessarily encumbered by France to make independence happen. The names we rightly salute as founding fathers who pledged their lives and honor for the infant United States of America spent the productive years of their lives in debate, argument, intrigue, and scandal. Their product, the U.S.A. in 2018, is an amazing and certainly Providentially ordained land, still one of opportunity and liberty, both of

Among the top ten things a lot of folks think are in the Bible but are not, such as “God won’t give us more than we can handle” and “God helps those who help themselves,” is this nugget: Forgive and Forget. The Bible does say “ He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west ” Psalm 103:12 (NLT), but that’s God, not us. We have plenty of instruction from scripture about anger, forgiveness, and vengeance. Our anger should be brief, vengeance left to God, and forgiveness reflective of how God has offered to forgive us. If we wish to reflect God’s forgiveness in how we express forgiveness there are some things we should remember about His way. First, all transgressions are sins against God, regardless of who else is hurt or offended along the way. The reason that sin is sin is that, by definition, it separates us from a completely holy and righteous God. Secondly, God withholds final judgement for the ultimate offense of rejecting Him, so every moment that

My granddaughter went away to church camp this week. I am certain she will have a great time, make great new lasting friendships, have a basketful of wonderful memories, and look forward to going to again next summer. That’s the way it should be. Assuming she doesn’t get poison ivy like I did. Anybody that knows anything about my childhood knows that I was not an easy living suburban kid. I grew up in the country. Although it wasn’t farm life, it was rural, and there were animals. Some of our animals were kept for food,  like our rabbits and our beagles and our chickens and our pigs. The beagles weren’t edible, of course, but they did chase squirrels and rabbits for my dad to shoot and skin and fry up for supper. For a brief time in my early years, we drew water from a well, cut wood for heat, and took baths in a galvanized silvery colored tub. We got a phone when I was in first grade. It was the heavy black kind with a metal dial that buzzed on the way around and cl