My desk is usually organized using the highly technical "stack method": there's a stack for scrap paper, a stack for my to-do list, a stack for long-term concerns, a stack for things to keep track of until Sunday . . . just a lot of stacks of paper, folders, books, and other things. (Right now I even have a stack of plaques and pamphlets.) At any moment, I can lay my hands on exactly what I need because I know it's somewhere in that stack. Of course, the filing cabinet and tr

Tucked inside the Christmas section of many hymnals is a poem by Christina Rossetti, later set to music by the great Gustav Holst: "In the Bleak Midwinter." It's about the mystery of a God whom "heaven cannot hold" come down to earth in a stable who will come again to reign. The only proper response to such love, it says, is to "give him my heart." With all that goodness and love packed into four stanzas, I've often wondered why it's called "bleak" midwinter. With that said,

The Church of England has gone off the deep end once again, this time offering the rite of baptism as a way to celebrate a sex change surgery or embracing a transgender identity, moments the bishops are calling the beginning of a new life just as surely as if one were to be made a new creation in the Holy Spirit. Such a thing is unfathomable biblically, but it's also unthinkable historically, even just in terms of the denomination. The founding slogan, the basic premise, of t

Every January, I go through all my files, both paper and electronic, and get rid of things I no longer need. This year I went a step further and decided I didn't really need to keep every birthday card or concert program I've ever had, so I ended tossing about two garbage bags full of nothing but paper. I'm in the process of moving things from my current church computer to the new one, and the same cleaning is happening. Sometimes you just need to get rid of the clutter. Clut

Friendship has been a major topic of research for some time now. It's easy to understand why: no one has friends anymore. It is said the average American man is the loneliest he has ever been in history, and American women don't fare much better. For all of our gadgets and gizmos to connect us, we're more isolated than ever. Even churches have failed in this respect. Continuing my theme from Wednesday, we used to have songs about friends. Some were about heaven, too; "I'll Me

I love contemporary Christian music (CCM). I have a list of songs I wish we'd sing in worship, as a matter of fact. But I also have a list of criticisms of CCM, and one hit me in a big way this week. Of all the things we sing about in CCM, we seem to incredibly rarely sing about heaven. And that's a mistake. Maybe it's because I grew up with a hymnal titled Heavenly Highway Hymns, or maybe it's because of the deteriorating state of the world today, but I enjoy -- and conseque

A friend of mine, Claire*, recently sent me a disheartening message on Facebook: "It scares me thinking I have to essentially brainwash myself to believe something." She went on to say her faith is wavering greatly right now, and this woman with a master's degree in Christian education is teetering on the edge of atheism. "I can't let go completely because I'm still scared of hell," she confessed, "but is fear enough to make up for not being able to convince myself to love Go

One of the most curious details included in the Bible, in my opinion, is in 2 Samuel 23:20. In a list of David's Mighty Men, we find Benaiah, who "struck down Moab's two mightiest warriors. He also went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion." Killing a lion is surely a noteworthy feat; killing one at close quarters in a pit, even more so. But why "on a snowy day"? Just because snow was rare? Lions don't hunt in winter weather? I don't know! (Personally, if I want l

If there's one thing I've never been called in my life, it's "optimist." Do I try to hope for the best? Absolutely. But the best rarely happens. Do I see the world as a pessimist? Nope. The worst rarely happens, either. I call myself a realist: I want the good things to happen, but I prepare for the bad, and I keep my view somewhere in the middle -- where things really are. It means that different people will see me differently, some as a killjoy, some as a dreamer, but no ma

There's an old saying: "it's the little things in life that bring the most pleasure." (Or something like that.) For my money, that's true. Sure, the big things may deliver the most happiness for a specific, usually quite short, amount of time, but the little things just keep on giving. The joys of the sound of rain on a metal roof, the smell of old books, the taste of the first bite of your favorite dessert after you've not had it for a while -- these never really diminish wi