Invitation: Locker Room

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Earlier this week, while changing in the locker room, I heard a guy repeatedly cursing repeatedly and making a barking sound which may have been a laugh. Another guy was on his cell phone calling off work. I thought the first guy was rudely interrupting the second, until I turned around and saw they were the same guy. This man was having a particularly bad flare up of Tourette’s Syndrome, and needed time off. A few minutes later I was on my usual elliptical machine and working out with music pumping into my ear buds. When the first song ended, I could hear the barking sound echoing through the gym. Continue reading →

Invitation: I Can See Clearly Now

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my eyes. Design-wise they aren’t so great. I am very near-sighted. I’m fortunate that my vision is easily corrected with glasses or contacts, but without corrective lenses my adult vision has landed somewhere between 20/220 and 20/240. Legal blindness is 20/200 in the better eye. I can’t read normal print more than about 6 inches from my face, and headlines are a strain at arm’s length. Since eyeglasses weren’t invented until the latter half of the 13th century, I am grateful to have been born afterward. In the 12th century, despite a pretty capable brain, my options would have been quite limited by my visual impairment. My potential – maybe my understanding of the world – would probably never have exceeded the length of my arm. Ironically, my inability to see would have rendered others unable to see me for who I truly was. Continue reading →

Invitation: No Expectations

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You can’t advertise an open house and then be irritated when unexpected guests show up. Several weeks ago I wrote about the interlopers, a couple cats who now eat the food we originally began to set out for one specific cat, who doesn’t visit us much anymore. A couple other cats have joined them and there’s at least one very well-fed squirrel frequenting our back yard. Continue reading →

100 Thanks!

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One week ago today this blog hit its 100th consecutive daily devotional post (though recently some have come in just under the wire). Meant to post something then, but life happens. There are only so many minutes in a day, so I am truly touched and grateful whenever someone spends a few of them reading, liking, or commenting on a post. Looking forward to sharing what I hope will be many posts to come. Peace and thanks!

Invitation: Prodigal

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Today’s Sunday readings include the parable of the Prodigal Son. In case you’re not familiar, it is a story about a rich young man who demands his inheritance and squanders it on “dissolute living.” In other words: booze and prostitutes. It didn’t take long until he was broke and starving. He returned home, ready to apologize to his father and beg for forgiveness he knew he didn’t deserve. To his surprise, when he got home, rather than tear into him, his father ran to the gate, tossed a robe on his shoulders, and threw him a party before he could even get the apology out. His brother was unhappy about this turn of events and complained that in all the time he’d dutifully minded his father, he’d never gotten a party. The father told the brother: “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

Which brother are you? Continue reading →

Master Plan

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 27; 147:12-20, Exodus 1:6-22, 1 Corinthians 12:12-26, Mark 8:27-9:1

The story of Joseph, his many brothers, and his father Jacob is very near its end with today’s reading. The journey to Egypt for Jacob (also called Israel) and his sons has been a long and twisted one.While Joseph and Pharaoh’s favor allowed the fledgling nation of Israel to settle freely in the Egyptian land of Goshen with all the food they needed, the other residents of Egypt were not so lucky during this seven years of famine. After giving Pharaoh all their money one year and their livestock the next, they had nothing left but their land and bodies. In exchange for food, they offered themselves up as Pharaoh’s slaves and had to pay a tribute of a fifth of all they harvested. Continue reading →

Invitation: I was hungry.

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On my first day of freshman orientation at Notre Dame, the opening meeting ended with a mass. My three roommates and I walked up to receive communion together. As I later learned, two of us were practicing Roman Catholics, one was from a Roman Catholic family but going through a “rebellious phase,” and the fourth was a Buddhist whose parents had been born in China. He didn’t know thing one about Roman Catholicism, let alone the Eucharist, but in my naivete I assumed we were all Catholic and didn’t question anything when he stepped up to take communion with us. Afterward he asked: “So what was that bread thing all about?” Slightly scandalized, I gave him a brief outline of the Lord’s Supper and advised him that in the future, he should probably decline partaking. He shrugged and said: “I was hungry. It was bread.” Continue reading →

Those Crazy Christians

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Earlier this week we reflected on how the world sees Christians as Just. Plain. Crazy. A few years back, Brad Paisley wrote a song about exactly that. It’s an interesting take on what we may look like to those outside the faith, will all our faith and flaws bundled together. Hope you enjoy this video put to his music by the United Church of Ovid. Peace!

 

Invitation: Lives of Welcome

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When you throw a party, how early do you send out invitations? Nobody with a lick of sense creates a playlist, orders a cake, sets out coasters, fills a cooler with ice and then just hopes people will show up. We send out invitations weeks or sometimes months in advance so the people who are important to us can plan to be there. We lay the groundwork.

How do you feel when you get a last minute invitation? I feel like an afterthought. Continue reading →

The Cross

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My brother John Schultz recorded a cover of “The Cross” by Prince.

I love this version and hope you do too.