Blog Posts

Diversity complicates life, and perhaps for this reason we tend to surround ourselves with people of similar age, economic class, and outlook. Church offers a place where infants and grandparents, unemployed and executives, immigrants and blue bloods can all come together.  One morning I sat sandwiched between an elderly man hooked up to a puffing oxygen tank on one side, while on the other side a breastfeeding baby grunted loudly and contentedly throughout the service.  Where else can we go ...

Jesus once asked his disciples, “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?” I have seen scores of creative ministries around the world that express God’s grace through service.  One that will always stand out in memory is a restaurant in Lima, Peru, that I came across serendipitously.  Just off a main street known for peddlers and pickpockets, I entered a beautiful colonial courtyard, vintage 1820, in a high-ceilinged room trimmed with ...

The cows, always the cows, hundreds of them, thousands of them.  They stand in a pack blocking traffic, take naps in the middle of a busy highway, walk unmolested through a fruit stand, devour the grass and flowers in a public park.  Somehow the snarling motorcycles, motorized rickshaws, trucks, and automobiles thread their way through the bovine obstacle course—a good thing, for woe to the Indian driver who injures a sacred cow. India assaults the senses.  Vehicle horns beep out ...