The Uplifting Word

Suffering is the indispensable result of living in a fallen world. Jesus told us tribulation would come. (John 16:33) He said rain would fall on the good and the evil. (Matthew 5:45) Though no one likes pain, problems, or persecution, once we accept hardships as normative, we are left with only one question: “Will I suffer for doing right or for doing wrong?”

The annals of history will undoubtedly record that in the year 2020, while suffering through the Coronavirus Pandemic, America finally learned Mom was right all along. It is important to wash our hands. Though we cannot seem to agree on the optimal song, the common thread in practically every hand sanitation lecture produced during this crisis is our solemn duty, for timing purposes, to sing while we scrub, as if the human brain were incapable of estimating a twenty second time period in complete silence.

My wife and I are praying every night for our friends and their twin babies, born at only 27 weeks, who are fighting for their lives as I compose these words. God was seventy percent finished with His knitting inside the womb when doctors interrupted the process in order to promote life. Now, the babies are outside the womb, yet our God continues His knitting. As the family and community pray fervently, teams of doctors and nurses work diligently to preserve these precious lives, providing a stark contrast with the doctors who interrupt God’s knitting to destroy life through abortion.

Here’s a Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares) is a popular 1991 country song by Travis Tritt in which a man flips a quarter to an old flame who had broken his heart so she could place a local call at a pay phone. I thought of it the other day when I heard a story about a church that branded itself as cool and popular. Their Sunday morning service was quite the show.

Modern society relentlessly drives wedges between groups of people based upon their race, gender, sexuality, politics, or wealth. In the minds of some, a lack of street cred means any opinion I may offer as a white, straight, conservative, middle class male must be dismissed as irrelevant. Born in late December of 1964, I am eleven days from being the final boomer.

The International Coalition of Apostolic Leaders has begun selling memberships for $450. Cough up the dough and you can claim official membership in a group that has not existed for two millennia! This attempt to purchase apostleship is not original. Simon the Sorcerer offered Peter money to acquire the ability to perform apostolic miracles. The sin of simony, which refers to the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges, is named for him.