A Long Obedience In The Same Direction

I am left handed.  I always have been.  Someday when I was 3 or perhaps 4 years old, a box of crayons was put in front of me and I was invited to draw a picture.  I reached out and grabbed a crayon with my left hand.  Most people in this first experience reached out with their right hand.  But not me.  I am left handed. When I went to school I noticed a few things.  First, if I wanted to use my left hand to cut paper, I had to find one of only one or two pairs of scissors with the title “lefty” on them to do so.  I learned to cut with my right hand.  It was easier to just accommodate.  But I was still left handed. I was shown how the proper way of writing consisted of writing from the left to the right, and included an angle to my letters that came quite naturally to right handed writers, but not to me.  I learned how to make my letters stand up straight instead of lean to the left, and I got used to not being able to see what I had just written.  I made it work.  Because

Have you seen or heard the "football field" illustration of the age of the earth and where human life shows up?  It's worth five minutes of your life. Just want the "Cliff's Notes" version?  OK.  Scientists believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old.  Stretch those years across the 100 yards of a football field and you go over 90 yards before you start seeing mammals appear on the earth.  Humanity as we know it shows up in the last inch before the goal line.  Your life and mine are less than 1/1000 of a millimeter on this football field.   That's not eternity, mind you, that's just a REALLY LONG TIME - 4.5 billion years.   Now, let's imagine that there is another football field starting from today, and heading 4.5 billion years into the future.  And let's say that something that a person does in their lifetime has the power to either give them an ice cream cone every day for the rest of those 4.5 billion years, or to make them

The last 6 weeks I've been meeting with a group of 7 people who expressed interest in discussing Peter Enns' book The Bible Tells Me So: How Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable To Read It . Although the book title has the effect of offending both people outside the faith and inside, the basic premise of the book is that we need to take the Bible seriously - but not literally. Over and over these past few weeks we've discussed Enns' point that the actual words of the Bible force careful readers to abandon certain ideas about the Bible that sound good, but don't actually work.  Some of the ideas that don't survive a careful reading:   The Bible is without error in all things it discusses. The Bible is without contradictions. The Bible is God's rulebook, cookbook, lawbook, instruction manual for Godly living. Good Christians must strive to harmonize all places where problems with the above 3 points show themselves, so they can continue to believe

I've been involved in Evangelical Christian churches, educational institutions, and organizations since I was in high school.  That's over 30 years.  There seems to have been one overarching theme of all these "voices" influencing my spiritual development:  The most important thing is your personal salvation.   I've been involved in week after week of Bible studies, worship services, Christian concerts and teaching events with an extremely PERSONAL focus.  Main questions addressed are personal matters such as:   "What do I believe?" "What is Jesus (or the Spirit, or the Bible) saying to me right now?" "How can I overcome these sin patterns and habits in my life?" "How can I recapture a spiritual 'high' that will keep me going for another week?" There is usually a nod to the bigger issues facing our world, our nation, our community.  But the idea is once I hear clearly from God through going to church, r