Remember “Well done, thou good and faithful servant….” (Matthew 25:21)? These words may have comforted us when we’ve wondered if our lifework was worthy of God’s commendation. The usual interpretation of *The Parable of the Talents (or the Three Servants) revolves around reassurances that good deeds or high integrity eventually meet with God’s approval. (Although comforting, this blessing alsoMORE...
There’s more to Norbert/you/me than our lamenting. We’re also hopeful folks, whose insistent searching also keeps us positive. Today a postscript that might move us beyond mourning about the future. Those of us who are older may find our insights, our work or ourselves sidelined or shelved. Giving in to mournful outlooks doesn’t help much at all, so many of us have figured out ways to keepMORE...
A *recent article in The Atlantic caught my attention. Its title, “We’re Already Living in the Metaverse,” is striking. The subtitles are even stronger: “Reality is blurred. Boredom is intolerable. And everything is entertainment.” Some reactions….. What Atlantic staff writer Megan Garber observes about our society—about each of us?—is that we may be so thoroughly immersed in a culture ofMORE...
There’s this brilliant guy in our church—let’s call him Norbert—who has always inhabited the worlds of front-edge science and theology. When Norbert speaks, his questions and ideas may sometimes be hard to understand. Knowing him all these years, I’m pretty sure that he knows—and perhaps laments—that many of us may never catch up to his levels of intellect and understanding. That his array ofMORE...
Tomorrow’s reminder: God’s love redeems us. We’re saved not only from eternal punishment, but also made useful for God’s purposes. We experience that love in our love for each other. Lives bent toward loneliness, despair or self-doubt are turned around by the tangible evidence that someone else cherishes us. When love finds us, we’re rescued, retrofitted with hope and reinforced for purposedMORE...
A couple of weeks ago, my ESL student and I discovered that as young boys we both spent a good share of our summer days playing in the dirt. He grew up in rural India and I spent my early years in a Los Angeles suburb. We both remembered how enjoyable it was to dig and build things—roads, dams, structures. How we added water to transform dirt into mud, streams or ponds. How sticks, rocks andMORE...
Over my lifetime, I’ve thought about *errands in several different ways. When I received my driver’s license in high school, I would volunteer to take the Dodge station wagon out for the simplest family tasks. As I matured into adulthood, the amount and complexity of necessary errands—encapsulated in TO DO Lists—shaded my feelings in a different way: I had to squeeze these chores into the inMORE...
When I fill out forms that are necessary for navigating my current existence, I sometimes come up against questions where my likely answer is not included in the possible responses. So I enter D/N/A or N/A. Every day I deal with all sorts of messages that claim to be important enough for me to read, explore further or answer. It would be easy enough to open all of them—and enter the danger zonesMORE...
BOB SITZE has filled the many years of his lifework in diverse settings around the United States. His calling has included careers as a teacher/principal, church musician, writer/author, denominational executive staff member and meat worker. Bob lives in Wheaton, IL.