Category: Love

4/17/2025 0 Comments

He Loved Them to the End

Leonardo da Vinci famously portrayed the Last Supper. At West Point, I was part of a group that reenacted this iconic scene. It was a sobering key event during Holy Week, preceding Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection. During that final meal with His followers, Jesus demonstrated His immense love for them through His actions and message.

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3/25/2025 1 Comment

A Fabulous Debt

Our dogs can be obnoxious. Whenever our next-door neighbor’s kids or dogs play in their backyard, Sig and Uzi run along the wooden fence barking with some dog-only-knows obsession. When birds fly overhead or geese land on the pond, they race the length of the yard yapping, trying to create a “no-fly zone.” Phil and Julie never complain. Graciously, they say the noise does not bother them and they like dogs so don’t worry about it.

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3/11/2025 3 Comments

Mindlock

They were college roommates with a friendship that brought laughter and fun to almost everyone who entered their orbit. Now, 44 years later, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they bash each other on social media with barely concealed contempt. Whoever said, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” was internally dishonest. Negative words do more than upset, they create resentment, rifts, and land littered with destroyed relationships.

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2/25/2025 0 Comments

Crafting Circles Not Cliques

Todd Foreman

My West Point classmate Todd Foreman is the most generous person I know in helping those around him, whether they be friends, coworkers, family, or those who are underprivileged, disabled, neglected, or hurting. Todd has a soft spot in his heart that is bigger than the state of Texas, where he resides. Sometimes, to his detriment, he puts the needs of others before his own needs in keeping with the Apostle Paul’s admonition, “Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3,4). Todd is a make-the-circle-bigger kind of leader.

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2/11/2025 0 Comments

A Booster

Larry and Valencia Turrentine

Larry leads a group of military academy graduates in our weekly Tuesday night prayer ZOOM® calls with a brief devotional and prayer. His words often encourage us. When I asked Larry what we could pray for him for the year, his answer was thoughtful and four-fold. He asked for prayer for those he was financially counseling and coaching who were in debt. He requested a benevolent, discerning heart for those needing love and financial assistance. Larry sought wisdom in leading online classes to facilitate spiritual growth. He solicited energy to not grow weary in visiting those who were bedridden and suffering from dementia.

Larry often sends me encouraging texts. He is a caring friend I go to for advice, a good listener, and a gentleman who, above all, seeks to honor God. I thank God for bringing him into my life and the lives of countless others. Larry is a booster.

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12/24/2024 0 Comments

Insignificant

He was born in a lowly place—a smelly stable in a manger, nursed among unclean animals because his parents were required by edict to register in an obscure village—Bethlehem, the town Micah, the prophet, foretold (Micah 5:2). His father, Joseph, nearly in secret divorced the unborn Child’s mother, Mary, until an angel intervened and informed him that she conceived through the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:19,20). Joseph was a humble carpenter, whose trade he would pass on to his Boy, raised in the Galilean town of Nazareth. “‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Nathanael asked him. ‘Come and see,’ Philip answered” (John 1:46).

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11/30/2023 0 Comments

Taking Blows

Fragile. Thin-skinned. Does it increasingly seem that we live in an age when many Christians cannot take criticism or rebuke of any sort without getting defensive and angry? Try confronting a believer over sin and see how that goes. Observe someone’s attitude or comment on questionable conduct, and be prepared to be attacked or shunned. Myles Munroe wrote in Waiting and Dating, “Being open to correction means making ourselves vulnerable, and many people are not willing to do that.”

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11/9/2023 0 Comments

If

Oswald Chambers made an interesting observation in My Utmost For His Highest, after musing upon John 14:15, “If ye love Me, ye will keep my commandments.” (RSV):
"Our Lord never insists upon obedience; He tells us very emphatically what we ought to do, but He never takes means to make us do it. We have to obey Him out of a oneness of spirit. That is why whenever our Lord talked about discipleship, He prefaced it with an IF—you do not need to unless you like."

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10/28/2023 4 Comments

A Wonderful Aroma

Meditation
2 Corinthians 2:14-16—But thanks be to God, who always puts us on display in Christ and through us spreads the aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For to God we are the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To some we are an aroma of death leading to death, but to others, an aroma of life leading to life. And who is competent for this?

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9/16/2023 1 Comment

No Love for His Brother

Meditation
Luke 15:28-30—"Then he became angry and didn’t want to go in. So his father came out and pleaded with him. But he replied to his father, ‘Look, I have been slaving many years for you, and I have never disobeyed your orders, yet you never gave me a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your assets with prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’”

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7/3/2023 1 Comment

"The Sparkle Creed"

Edina Community Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation in Edina, Minnesota, celebrated Pride Sunday led by their female pastor in reciting the sparkle creed whose words state:
I believe in the non-binary God whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads, and who saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow Spirit, who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.[1]
This creed is a gross perversion of theology. It represents the misguided attempts of a congregation to fit God into their inclusive agenda that will spare no expense to accommodate a world fully intent on making sexual sin something to celebrate and force upon all those who take God’s warnings seriously and strive to obey Him.

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5/28/2023 1 Comment

Listening When We Don't Want To

Mike and Robbie boarded the light rail on their way to a Seattle Mariners game. A few feet from their seats sat a dirty, smelly man suffering from an addiction, mental health challenge, or both. Mike was repulsed and cautious toward this man conversing with an imaginary person. Mike noted, “He rearranged his clothing and belongings continuously and removed and replaced a fake mustache.” Mike prayed that he would not attack them or be a problem. The Holy Spirit had another plan. He whispered in Mike’s ear that this was a man with a name, a man loved by Him, and that Mike should approach and talk to him. But that was not something Mike wanted to do, and for most of the train ride, he resisted listening to persistent promptings.

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2/28/2023 0 Comments

From a Deeper Place

Hannah suffered from three places. First was the place of torment. She had a rival—a woman who taunted her severely to provoke her, often reducing her to tears and enflamed resentment. Second was the place of pain. She could not bear a child, which ate at her soul as she felt God’s withholding hand. Not even the encouragement of her loving husband could ease the ache she carried. Third was the place of misunderstanding. Eli, the priest, mistook Hannah’s silent prayer in her anguished worship. He saw her moving lips and thought she was drunk. Instead of investigating, he scolded her and told her to stop drinking.

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1/25/2023 0 Comments

The Unhindered Way

Meditation
John 14:9—Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time without your knowing Me, Philip? The one who has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’

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12/16/2022 0 Comments

Grief

Grief is a day shrouded in fog and icy rain fed by a howling wind. It is spoiled fruit no longer fit to be savored. Grief makes its exhausted bed in a hidden cave on a barren mountain ridge called Sorrow. It rests in rare moments of silence and grows weary amidst mindless laughter. Its tears leave furrows unfilled by platitudes. When its memories are roused, new rivers flow, and expectation is uprooted, torn, and damaged.

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9/7/2022 1 Comment

The Long Walk

Meditation
Romans 8:3-4--What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be accomplished in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

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7/22/2022 0 Comments

Revisiting Grace

There is a thoughtful piece on grace circulating on Facebook that I have amplified and maximized with apologies to the unknown author.

Grace constitutes unearned or unmerited favor. She is seen throughout the Bible. Grace means promotion, not based on qualifications. When she speaks, protocols are suspended. So, King Ahasuerus extends the scepter to his Queen Esther. With Grace at work, laws are set aside for a higher purpose. A hungry David understood this when he ate consecrated bread (1 Samuel 21:6). Jesus commended his insight because “The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). A Samaritan woman with five different husbands was blessed by a thirsty grace-giving Savior. An adulteress experienced no stones from a sin-convicted crowd. When Grace acts, pedigrees and ethnic background are irrelevant, so Joseph, the Hebrew prisoner, became Egypt’s second most powerful leader. When Grace operates, educational qualifications are thrown out. Fishermen become disciples, to the dismay of the religious elite. Grace instills hope in the hopeless, joy in the forlorn, and peace in the agitated. She has your back while she holds your heart. She transforms lament into a dancing melody. She is the warmth that accompanies light, and she is God’s gift to you forever.

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7/1/2022 0 Comments

Inability to See

Meditation
John 8:25-27—“Who are You?” they questioned. “Precisely what I’ve been telling you from the very beginning,” Jesus told them. I have many things to say and to judge about you, but the One who sent Me is true, and what I have heard from Him—these things I tell the world.” They did not know He was speaking to them about the Father.

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4/25/2022 1 Comment

The Problem with Religion

Did you know that God is offended by meaningless, false-hearted chanting?

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12/7/2021 1 Comment

A Faith of Equal Privilege

The antidote to discrimination and racism is Jesus Christ. Pastor E.V. Hill once shared his response to Black Panthers threatening his life for preaching about “that white Jesus.”
I don’t know anything about a white Christ—I know about Christ, a Savior named Jesus. I don’t know what color He is. He was born in brown Asia, He fled to black Africa, and He was in heaven before the gospel got to white Europe . . . I do know one thing: if you bow at the altar with color on your mind, and get up with color on your mind, go back again and keep going back until you no longer look at His color, but at his greatness and His power—His power to save![1]

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