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The Baptism of Water
If I asked you, “What are we washing off with the Baptism of water? What had been added to us that needed to be washed away?” You would answer correctly, “What was added in the garden! The deadly knowledge of good and evil!” Yes. We’d all agree, evil must be washed away. But can I ask you to consider that the knowledge of good must also be washed away? John the Baptist cried to the so-called goodness experts, “And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax…
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Social Justice Burnout
In 1986 I was 26 and very busy serving the needs of the teen moms in our rural county. This younger me, the one sure of the answers, the one full of confidence and the one who possessed a small bit of talent had founded Bethesda Pregnancy Services and I was proud–of myself. My calling, as I called it, had begun much earlier when I gave my first ever impromptu speech as a high school freshman. My impromptu subject? Abortion. I had just five minutes to prepare but I knew exactly what I would say because I’d been pondering the abortion debate from a young person’s perspective. I mounted the…
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Worry Dethroned
I’m a natural worrier. The twist of my gut, the contortions of my mind intended to untwist the gut, the acceptance of my good plan, then the knowing there is no good plan, not really. The twist of my gut, the contortions of my mind intended . . . around and around. Minutes, sometimes hours. A few mornings ago, a truth came to me through that little portal, the one we all possess. The one where the Spirit whispers, “Look!” “W.O.R.R.Y. doesn’t work. You know it doesn’t, even when you think it does. It’s entirely backwards: Y.R.R.O.W” I jotted down the letters on a piece of paper and the acrostic…
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A Night in the Chestnut Tree, John G. Paton
Out of all our experiences on this earth, none will transform us like that of being met by Christ in the midst of our pain, our fear, our need. John G. Paton describes one such occasion he experienced while fleeing the clubs of the natives who sought to take his life: “I climbed into the tree, and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the frequent discharge of muskets, and the yells of the savages. Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe in the arms of Jesus! Never, in all…
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The Fringes of Victory, John G. Paton
Does loss haunt you? Does it cause you to be insecure about your relationship to God? John G. Paton (1824-1907) suffered losses beyond the experience of most. A month after establishing a mission station in the heart of the warring and human flesh eating people of the islands of Vanuatu, his wife died from complications of malaria. Two weeks after his wife’s death, his newborn son also died. Alone but for native helpers, Paton suffered great losses for the next three years: bouts of malaria, constant death threats, frequent native wars, a serious outbreak of measles purposely brought by a sandalwood trader to the islands to wipe out the natives,…
