What’s “True” About You?
John was the last person you would have expected God to use. But powerfully use him, He did. Growing up in eighteenth century England, from age 11 on John worked on slave ships; the family business. When he wasn’t sailing he was “collecting” slaves on the islands and mainland of the West African coast for sale to visiting traders. Eventually Newton became the captain of his own slave ship. His was a cruel and harsh experience. His skin was roughened by the harsh sea winds and his heart hardened by the life that went with it.
New at HuffPost: Billy Graham’s Warning to JFK
One week before President John F. Kennedy made the fateful trip to Dallas in 1963, Billy Graham “had an inner foreboding that something terrible was going to happen” to the president while there. He cited the “burden” he felt for him in his 1997 memoir, Just As I Am.
Read my full article at The Huffington Post.
Obama’s Doing or Undoing? — A Leadership Lesson
The current health care debacle in Washington is rife with lessons of all kinds for leaders. Not least among them are arguably the two most common mistakes made by leaders: One, overestimating themselves and, two, underestimating their responsibilities to the people they serve. This dangerous combination all too often fuels the foolish behavior of overstepping or overreaching as a leader.
Read my full article at The Huffington Post.
Would Jesus Attend Our Church Service?
How many more minutes before the church service would be over? That’s all I could think about. Every agenda item on the scheduled liturgy was just something else I would have to endure. My mind worked hard to calculate and estimate how much time each of these “perfunctories” would demand: Invocation – two minutes. Reading from Psalms – five minutes. Hymn #124 – three to five minutes. Hymn #291 – another three to five minutes. Sermon – twenty-five minutes, if I was lucky. And on and on it went until the mental calculator registered fifty-five minutes. Fifty-five minutes?! Fifty-five minutes to go. Fifty-five minutes of nothing to do but sit here. Fifty-five minutes until I could be released from this holding pattern. Fifty-five minutes until my mind could run free again. Fifty-five minutes until I could do what I really wanted to do.
Mine was a test of endurance. The pew was hard; the clock, slow; the mind was wandering; and the scene, all too familiar.
