Tag Archives: death

Do it now. Go say Thank You.

Larry House died last week. He was my first boss, hiring me for my first wear-a-shirt-and-tie-everyday job at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in the development office. I will be forever grateful that he took a chance on me, a young, not-ordained, 20-something fresh out of seminary with lots to learn. Larry was aContinue reading “Do it now. Go say Thank You.”

“Lord, if you had been here …”

The problem with suffering is that it defies all what we think we know about God – that God has the power to heal, and that God is all-loving. We experience God’s love at times, and God’s power at other times. But there are plenty of times when we don’t feel either. No power. No love. Just absence.

God with us, in darkness and death

The half empty glass of pessimism that is raised by the writer of Ecclesiastes
is met by the half-full chalice of life-giving blood that is offered to us by our Lord
during the prelude to his execution.
Two cups shared, filled with tension and realism,
given to us to drink;
one an antidote to the faux optimism that too often masquerades as spirituality;
the other a drink that flows from death and quenches the thirst of life.