Randy Greenwald

Pastors always want to go to church.

That is an axiom similar to ‘lightning never strikes twice’ or ‘watched pots never boil’. It is an assumed truth rarely questioned.

Some pastors, I humbly offer, do at times want to stay home from church. They shouldn’t, of course, and neither should any other Christian concerned to hang on to Christ alone.

Yesterday morning was not a good one for me. I was coming off a week of vacation, and as well mentally working through a handful of serious concerns. Mornings, especially Sunday mornings, are times when all my weaknesses and faults and failures seem to line themselves up for my perusal and review.

The net result was that I wanted to hide. I wanted to curl up in a quiet corner with a book and enjoy a period of withdrawal and isolation. The last thing I wanted to do was to mingle with chipper and cheery Christians.

But I knew that I must. So I did, trusting that the God of grace would be gracious to me.

He was. His grace was clear in the message preached, not by me, but by our associate Geoff Henderson. And his grace was clear in the closing hymn, one which God has used repeatedly at difficult times in my life.

Again and again it is made clear to me that the times we most want to absent ourselves from worship are the times that we most need to be there. Sorrow, trial, struggle, are all things which mess with our composure and self-confidence. They are the plow which turn over the dirt in our lives. They are the blades which make furrows in our heart ready for the seed of the gospel to be planted.

Undisturbed hearts more easily resist gospel truth. The disturbed heart is disturbed soil, and there, gospel seed is so readily received.

I’m out of the woods.

Well, in one sense of the word.

I am so grateful for God’s good grace in allowing our entire family to gather for six days in the woods at the Big Creek Group Camp Site in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

We had a wonderfully relaxing time even when it rained for a good portion of the first day.

I know that few find pleasure in living and eating outdoors for six days with no electricity or other comforts of home. But it’s what we do, and there is something wonderfully unifying about it.

But all good things must end, so, in one sense, I’m out of the woods. In other senses, of course, I’m as lost as ever!

[Let the record show, for honesty’s sake, that I am also thankful for family members with iPhones and occasional out of the park cell access for daily Rays updates. Total isolation just is not possible!]

There has been a renewed interest in the physicality of heaven. For a long time, it seems, evangelicals have imagined eternity as something of an otherworldly ethereal harps and clouds spiritual existence. While there is a lot that we are NOT told about what eternity is like, the hints we receive – not the least of which being the resurrection of the body – point to a physical reality.

It’s wonderful to imagine the continuity between this life and the next. I will have a body. Glorified in some way, but a body nonetheless, a body with correspondence to the body I now have.

There will be other continuities. Andy Couch in his intriguing book Culture Making reflects on the implications of God presenting eternity as a city descended to the earth. Without taking time to marshall all his well laid out argumentation, it is worthy to consider what cultural delights might accompany us in that age.

Earlier I wondered what occupations might find a parallel in the new heavens and new earth. I argued for preacher and others of you argued for musician, architect, and designer.

Now I want us to imagine what gifts of God given to us in this life will continue to be enjoyed in heaven. Crouch suggests french fries. Might it be possible to enjoy french fries without artery clogging or weight gain? I like to imagine that there will be access to cherry pie and baseball. Certainly baseball, maybe even played in an Iowa-esque cornfield!

One is tempted to say that we would not need to enjoy cherry pie or baseball, for all our satisfaction would be found in the Lamb. And yet, when I eat a pie today, I give praise to its proximate and distant creator – my wife, and the One who created flavors and taste buds, and pleasure. I cannot see such delight and the praise which ensues disappearing from a perfected creation.

What might you hope to find in the new heavens and new earth?

I’m way behind in my reading and writing.

I just read this post which was written in response to the murder of abortionist George Tiller.

The author is, I believe, libertarian. Her friends, she says, are all pro-choice. Her struggle with the topic is real.

This is a reflective piece which takes seriously the parallels between the controversy over slavery and that over abortion in this country.

We cannot justify unilateral acts of violence. We can, however, understand the dynamics which lead to them.

I have a lot of posts in the queue and on my mind, but I’m plum out of time for composing them. So, apart from a couple of pre-planned posts, Somber and Dull will grow quiet for a week.

You see, this afternoon, the whole family travels up to Tampa to be present as our son Seth formally graduates with a degree in interior design. (Yea, Seth!) Then, after that, we travel to North Carolina for our annual camping trip. All six children will be there, all three children-in-law, both grandsons, our daughter-in-law’s parents and brother, and former HPC intern Kevin McCarty, his wife Jenny, and their two children. I’ve lost count, but that is in the vicinity of 20 of us. Should be a great time.

Hopefully I’ll be back in the swing of things the week of the 29th!

I am sitting at an outside table at a Starbucks overlooking one of the busiest intersections in our city.

“Working” this intersection are several people who purport to be collecting money designated for care to the homeless. Each red light cycle, they stream through the stopped cars with their flyers and buckets soliciting contributions.

Such means of raising funds has always bothered me. What am I supposed to say when someone puts a bucket in front of me when I leave Walmart and they say, “Would you like to help crippled kids?” “No” just doesn’t seem like the right answer to such a question. “Not now” seems softer, but it masks my true answer, which is, “I’m not giving you anything.”

The leader of this crew retreated to the shade of an umbrella on the porch near me here to handle a couple of cell phone calls. I don’t intentionally eavesdrop, but she did nothing to keep the call quiet. What I learned was that each of the workers gets to keep 35% of what his bucket contains.

Not a bad gig, I suppose. If in an hour I collect $100 for the homeless, $35 goes into my own pocket.

The moral of the story for me is to keep refusing to help crippled kids, as awful as that looks, and to direct my giving to known and reputable agencies.

It is an ADD morning for me. Distractions don’t have to be large to be successful. So this crossed my desktop:

One person who attended a church service was not a native English speaker, and after the sermon greeted the preacher with great enthusiasm, saying, “Oh, pastor, thank you so much. Your sermon was absolutely superfluous!”

The pastor choked down a chuckle and responded, a bit tongue-in-cheek, “I’m glad you liked it. I’m thinking of having it published posthumously.”

With equal enthusiasm the person shot back, “Oh! The sooner the better!”

This made me wonder: if things done after we die are done ‘posthumously’, is it proper to say that I’m working on my sermon this morning ‘prehumously’?

Okay. Back to work.