Gaining a heart of wisdom
"Deep in our hearts, we know that the best things said come last," said Alan Alda in his memoir entitled Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. He's right, of course. We chat for hours of an evening, asking for and receiving updates on mutual friends, alternately bragging on and complaining about our kids; and then "linger… Continue reading Five Thoughts from the Doorway
Sometimes fictional theologians utter such delightful truths that I have to remind myself as I am reading, "He's not a real person. He doesn't exist outside this book." Jayber Crow is just such a man, stalwart resident and barber in Wendell Berry's fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. I love his thoughtful, meandering reflections on… Continue reading Just One Thing: Scorn
My family loves stories, and, together, we have read our way through everything from Laura Ingalls Wilder to J.R.R. Tolkien, either on the living room couch, at the dining room table, or in the car. For this reason, our brood is quite story-savvy, and it is not unusual to hear someone announce at some point in the… Continue reading Just One Thing: Foreshadowing
When I was a kid, the Pioneer Times used to publish just about anything. Our hometown post-mistress doubled as on-site reporter for the town's news, and there were weeks during the news-desert of mid-January when your second cousin's baby shower was ink-worthy, right down to the least-of-these who attended, " . . . and her… Continue reading Just One Thing: Heat
"They laid its beams and hung its doors with its bolts and bars. "* Not exactly the stuff of which a "life verse" or a New Year's Resolution is made, But five times in Nehemiah's counter-clockwise tour of the wall we are confronted: What's the point of a walled city if the gates are not… Continue reading Just One Thing: Gates
Maybe the abundance of "picture perfect" lives on social media has made me cynical. Maybe I've been tenderized by the fact that my family has grown to a point where everyone offers (brutally) honest feedback on just what it was like to grow up Morin. Whatever the reason, when I read Nehemiah 3, and its eighteen occurrences of "next to… Continue reading Just One Thing: Camaraderie
The way in which a person responds to opposition reveals the stuff he's made of. Nehemiah had barely unpacked his toothbrush in the ruined city of Jerusalem when his enemies started sharpening their swords -- and their tongues. Commentator Derek Kidner writes, "Sanballat and Tobiah throw a long shadow over the story." The truth is that without… Continue reading Just One Thing: Opposition
"The moment one life impinges on another, politics begin." Well said, Eugene Peterson (as usual), and certainly Nehemiah learned this lesson repeatedly in his quest to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem. There is no avoiding politics because there is no avoiding power and its use and misuse. In Nehemiah's time, the minor officials of the… Continue reading Just One Thing: Politics
I have learned that it is curmudgeonly to quibble over words and their usage, but, having acknowledged that this is the case, I will take the risk of appearing to be a teensy bit cantankerous in order to get to the point of Nehemiah's prayer in chapter one of his Old Testament memoir. Derek Kidner's commentary… Continue reading Just One Thing: “Awesome”
The book of Nehemiah is a shining example of one man's methods of accomplishing his goals. Most of us lack the passion (or even the attention span) to mourn and pray and fast over anything for four months, even if it affects us personally. Nehemiah grieved over a problem that was a thousand miles away… Continue reading Just One Thing: Urgency
