I love getting packages from Amazon in the mail. I especially love when I get the notification that my delivery is only 10 stops away.

Maybe it’s the little kid in me, but there’s still something magical about opening a package to find out what’s inside, even if you already know what it is. It feels like Christmas every single time.

I also love seeing the faces of people opening their presents when you know you finally got it right. That’s just as magical.

Maybe during this crazy polarizing pandemic year of 2020 we could do with a little less self-righteous trading of barbs and self-justifying posts and have a little more grace and generosity toward others.

If I remember how much I owe to the unmerited, undeserved grace of God, I am certainly less likely to condemn anyone else, even those with polar opposite political views.

If I remember that each person is created in the image of God and that Jesus thought enough of them to die for them (even the Trumps and Bidens of the world), then while I can certainly criticize their actions, I have no right to name-calling and judging their character.

After reading some of the social media posts, I’m thankful that God didn’t crucify me for all my mistakes like a lot of Facebook people want to do with public leaders and figures. He crucified Jesus instead in my place. He gave me the riches of His grace instead.

And yes, getting stuff from Amazon in the mail will never get old.

Since I started alternating between working from home and the office, I’ve finally discovered podcasts.

Well, I have listened to a podcast here and there, but now I am officially subscribed to several. Some of the ones I regularly check out are The Wally Show, The Brant & Sherri Oddcast, and GraveYard Tales.

That last one is a recent discovery. It’s full of tales about the spooky and supernatural. I’ve heard yarns about ghosts, tommyknockers (google it if you’re not familiar), and strange low-frequency noises.

Right now, that’s about all that I can handle. Plus, I listen to podcasts of sermons from my church and Kairos. Any more than that and my brain could quite possibly explode from all the new knowledge.

What are your favorite podcasts? This inquiring mind wants to know.

But really, you do matter. Yes you. You matter.

“To be a Christian now means
to have the courage
to preach the true teaching of Christ 
and not be afraid of it, not be silent out of fear 
and preach something easy
that won’t cause problems.
To be a Christian in this hour means 
to have the courage that the Holy Spirit gives…
to be valiant soldiers of Christ the King, 
to make his teaching prevail, 
to reach hearts and proclaim to them
the courage
that one must have to defend God’s law” (Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love).

It seems like the orthodox faith is becoming more and more unpopular. The trend is toward ditching the doctrines that make us uncomfortable and are no longer politically correct.

I believe one day American Christianity will look nothing like the faith of the New Testament, and one day the American church will be unrecognizable as the body of Christ.

But there will always be a remnant who hold fast to the true faith. They will be the ones hated and slandered and reviled, just as Jesus promised they would be. Even some professing believers will call them names and brand them as heretics and apostates.

Jesus said that if the world hated Him enough to crucify Him, then it will hate His followers. If you profess to follow the Jesus who was despised and rejected by men, yet the world loves you, then you are seriously doing something wrong.

I know many of us (including me) have gotten so adept at blending into the culture that the world no longer sees a difference. When we speak of Jesus but live like agnostics, then we take His name in vain.

Maybe it’s time that we stop being American Christians and start being Christian Americans.

Jesus didn’t call His people to be relevant as much as He called them to be faithful. Maybe it’s time for His people to repent and seek His face again, preaching the whole gospel of sin, hell, repentance, forgiveness, and salvation.

“[I]f my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14, NIV).

In case you were tired of the gloom and doom that’s all over the news and social media, here’s a little something to lighten the mood.

You’re welcome.

I’m preaching to myself as much as to anybody else. I’m not a good listener. Most of the time, I listen to respond or rebut but not to understand. I don’t really always engage the whole speaker– verbal, nonverbal, facial expressions, tone, etc. I just listen to words and not the heart behind the message.

The greatest command from God to the Israelites started off, “Listen.” In that context, listen means to hear and then put it into practice and not just add to your head knowledge.

We would do much better as a society if we spoke half as much and listened twice as often. If we could truly listen to those with whom we disagree, we might find we have more in common that we originally thought.

I heard something that convicted me. We don’t want to hear other opinions as much as we want to hear an echo of our own opinions. That’s why you see on social media people surround themselves with only like-minded thinkers and have very little tolerance for those who disagree or differ.

I’ve read some books by writers with very different worldviews than mine. I didn’t agree with a lot of what they said, but it forced me to examine what is was that I didn’t agree with and why. Was it really doctrinal or was it personal preference?

Maybe one day we will learn how to listen and not immediately shut down anything that we deem offensive or just plain wrong. Maybe we can skip the personal attacks and name-calling and realize that the battle is not against flesh and blood people but against spiritual forces.

It’s never bad or wrong to listen to someone else. We may find that we can learn something from anybody if we only have ears to hear.

I’ve had to confess and repent something lately.

Previously, whenever someone mentioned “black lives matter,” I’d be one of the first to come back with “all lives matter.” I didn’t get it.

Looking at one of the parable that Jesus taught, I’m starting to understand. Jesus left the 99 sheep to go looking for the one lost sheep, not because the lives of the 99 didn’t matter but because the life of the one was in danger.

Then I got to thinking about the Samaritan woman at the well.

She definitely understood how it was to be mistreated for her ethnicity. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans was everywhere and all the time. There was no getting away from it. The Jews hated the Samaritans and the Samaritans hated the Jews.

Also she was a women in a time when women were seen more as property and possessions than people. Her testimony in a court of law counted half of what a man’s did. Aside from her potential as a wife and mother, she had no value.

Yet here was this Jewish Rabbi who went out of His way to talk to this Samaritan woman in the hottest part of the day. He didn’t talk at her but to her and listened to her with the intent to understand and not to rebut.

Maybe I’m stepping out of line for saying this, but when I picture this conversation, I don’t hear Jesus saying to the women, “All Samaritan lives matter.”

Of course, they did.

But I imagine Jesus was saying to her, “Your individual life matters to me. You with all of your monumentally screwed up past and bad choices and shame and regret matter to me.”

Jesus looks at you in love at this moment and says to you, “Do you believe that your seemingly insignificant life matters to me? Do you believe that I see and care about you even now?”

Jesus said that His purpose was to seek and to save the lost. He didn’t mean people groups as much as He meant each and every person. He came to seek and to save you. He came to seek and to save me.

It’s one thing to know that God loves everybody in the whole wide world. He loves you because you fall under the category of everybody. But I wonder if you and I really grasp that God in Jesus has set His affections on you and me, not as part of a people group or nationality or race or socioeconomic class, but as individuals who bear the imago dei, the image of God.

Black lives matter. Every black life matters. You matter.

There’s a lot of anxiety and fear going around these days. If you pay attention to the news or social media at all, you will know how much unrest and chaos exists in the world. In fact, I wonder if their goal isn’t to stir up as much anxiety and unrest in you as possible so you will keep coming back for more information.

I know that tonight Jesus is still the Prince of Peace. It is not His will that you live in fear or anxiety. It is His will that you know and understand the Shalom peace that only Jesus can bring, that peace that transcends understanding and casts out all fear.

May that peace be yours tonight.

“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death.

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community” (Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life).

The only place where we find true unity and community is the Body of Christ, the Church. If the Church has lost its message of hope for the world, compromising it away for the sake of tolerance and acceptance, then the world is without hope. But if the Church in the face of ridicule and opposition will hold fast to the message of reconciliation given by Jesus, then there’s hope again.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better representation of those times when I pray and nothing coherent comes out. It feels like every thought in my head converges at once to the place where I’m trying to talk with God.

A lot of my prayers probably end up as jumbled as the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup, but the amazing part is that God hears beyond the words and sighs and groans to the heart of the matter beneath.

Sometimes, the words flow like they’re coming from somewhere else, almost like God is praying to God through me. Other times, I do good to get two words out before my mind wanders and my train of thought completely derails.

But even still, I pray. And so should you.